Random Review: Punisher – One Last Kill (BONUS) | Original Geek

A standalone Random Review — Steve and Jeff break down Marvel's Punisher: One Last Kill in under 20 minutes.

The dice gave us two prompts: the dog death in the opening and the PTSD representation throughout the special. Was the cold open mean-spirited or earned? Did Jon Bernthal's co-written script finally let Frank Castle move past the vengeance origin story the way Tom Holland's Spider-Man moved past Uncle Ben? And where does this 45-minute one-shot fit between Kingpin's New York and Spider-Man: Brand New Day?

We also get into:

• Why John Wick and Frank Castle handle the same trigger completely differently
• Judith Light playing against type as Ma Nucci
• Jon Bernthal's Castaway-level solo performance
• Karen Page's quick return from the Daredevil universe
• Danzig's "Mother" as the perfect cold-open needle drop
• Whether Disney+ is actually building toward a full Punisher season

If you haven't watched Punisher: One Last Kill yet — pause this, go watch the 45 minutes, come back. We'll wait.

Next episode: The Boys.

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Transcript

Steve Scarfo (00:05)
Yeah.

All right, welcome to the original geek random review. The dice set the direction, we set the topic. We know what we're reviewing, we just don't know how.

Jeff (00:14)
All right, we're doing Punisher, one last kill. And I know all we got was a special, I'll take it. But man, that would have been awesome to get a full season.

Steve Scarfo (00:15)
He

Yes.

I do like that they that they did it because we haven't seen the Punisher for a while. I haven't. We haven't seen Punisher on his own in a while. I didn't see him in Daredevils. Such a smartass. And so it was cool. I agree when I think I actually texted you when you said, we should do a Punisher.

Jeff (00:38)
Well, you haven't, but I saw him in Daredevil the last season we just watched.

Steve Scarfo (00:56)
review and I'm like, yeah, that sounds great. And I'm like, how many episodes and you're like, it's one like, and I'll be honest, it's not and I'm sure we'll get into it during the actual review. As you guys know, we do not know what we're talking about yet. We just know that it's gonna be something about this, this Punisher special and it was fantastic.

Jeff (01:01)
Yeah, it's like 45 minutes. It's not enough time.

Yeah,

highly recommend it if you haven't seen it and we'll keep, we always say this, we'll keep it as spoiler free as we can. But of course we don't even know the topic that we're gonna get to talk about. So maybe it'll be spoiler full, but in any case, watch it.

Steve Scarfo (01:30)
Yeah.

Yes, yeah,

and here's your warning that Jeff just gave you the warning. If you haven't seen Punisher One Last Kill, go watch it. Pause this. Don't turn it off. Pause it and then watch that 45 minutes or so and then come back. It's easy. It's easy. All right. All right. I'm going to roll for you. Special dice. Here we go. A three. Who failed fortitude? The camo tragedy.

Jeff (01:48)
Yeah, you got this.

Yeah, do it. Do it.

Steve Scarfo (02:04)
the death of a pet dog in the opening. Was it too mean-spirited? The special opens with a neighbor's dog being killed by Gnucci thug. While it successfully fuels the rage of the audience, many critics found it a cheap, manipulative trope that felt unnecessarily cruel even for a Punisher story.

Jeff (02:29)
I love,

I love that people were like, the dog died. Thanos snapped his fingers and half the universe died. I mean, come on. Like, okay, it was effective. It was like, it just showed how, you know, just this community is just totally broken. And it's funny because I was like, okay, so when does this take place?

Steve Scarfo (02:35)
you

Jeff (02:59)
in the Daredevil Kingpin timeline, because Kingpin has put his iron fist down on New York. So how this could even work in a police state that that fist has created, apparently not in Little Sicily. That's what they're saying. It's a good thing they're not calling it Little Italy in New York, because Little Italy in New York, for those who have not gone, it's nothing like this. Please do not watch this.

my God, I can't go there. It's one of the safest neighborhoods in New York. It's touristy, it's Italian, it's great. But to get back to this point, was like, bullshit, I wanted that guy punished. spoiler, it happens eventually. But I thought it was perfect for showing how

Steve Scarfo (03:30)
Yeah

All of the drug dealing is in the back room.

Yeah.

Jeff (03:58)
Horrible this community how far it has fallen because at first you know it's like is this homeless Marine vet gonna get you know harassed or hurt And almost even worse that it was his dog so for me. I didn't think it was too mean-spirited. I thought it was a

Steve Scarfo (04:20)
Yeah, I agree. think the brutality of it. You mentioned Thanos and Thanos is about as antiseptic genocide as there can be because he snaps his fingers and people just cease to exist. And not that they never existed, but people they're just gone from the world. This was and it's funny because they give you just enough like a minute or two of the guy with his dog.

And then they have this thug come by and basically throw the dog in front of a, I think it was like a trash truck. And they didn't hold back on sound effects. They don't show it, but the sound effects are pretty intense. And I agree with you. It gave me that feeling of, shit, this guy needs to go down. I think it also showed, they showed Castle sort of walk by. He goes out into the world.

Jeff (04:59)
Mm-hmm, yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Steve Scarfo (05:19)
And all of this stuff is going on and he's just oblivious to it because he's in his own little trauma and they make it look like he's never going to come back around. And if it's one of those, you know, look at John Wick, the entire John Wick series of movies started with the death of a dog. Right. And you go, OK, Jesus Christ, is this guy going to this will be it. He'll snap right now. And he doesn't.

Jeff (05:19)
Yeah.

Yeah,

you wanted him to do something in the moment and he's just so in his own world. You ready? Okay. I have rolled a four. We go from three to four. We're staying low on this thing. The brief runtime. Should we move to a different topic? Because I didn't realize this was one of the topics.

Steve Scarfo (05:57)
I'm ready, let's do it.

Hehehe

Jeff (06:16)
and we just talked about it. I'm gonna re-roll.

Steve Scarfo (06:18)
Yeah,

no, reroll. We kind of covered that.

Jeff (06:21)
because we said we wanted more. So, 17, successful wisdom. The PTSD representation. Frank's visions of his unit. A masterful character study. This special treats Frank's mental state with immense wisdom, showing the nightmarish corruption of his memories. It's a raw look at a man who is perpetually at war with his own.

Steve Scarfo (06:45)
Yeah, I'll be honest, I did not expect it. You know, for a Punisher storyline, we all sort of understand if you know the Punisher, if you're watching this, anything Punisher related, you know the story of his family. It's what makes him become the Punisher, right? His entire family gets killed by the Nuccis. And you just sort of go from that's what his motivation is, right? And...

you don't think about the other parts of his history as much because they focus so much on the history of his family in the city with this crime family. So I thought they did a great job. I've never dealt with that kind of trauma. So I felt like it was especially powerful. And I think Jon Bernthal just did an amazing job. It was it reminded me a little bit of Tom Hanks and Castaway because he was the only one on screen for a lot of it.

They flashed in and obviously there were other actors during the hallucinations, but yeah, I think his performance sold that middle ground between trauma and empathy, right? Because you feel for this guy who you get a look inside and you go, my God, this guy really is just tormented. I thought it was very well depicted. The scenes of him at his daughter's grave.

I think we're especially touching and then obviously becomes kind of a story point towards the end of the episode or the show. But yeah, I thought they did a great job with it. I think it was done and handled well.

Jeff (08:24)
Yeah, it's funny because I actually have quite a few Punisher comic books and as we like, we've always known this backstory. It's all about vengeance. So I thought John Bernthal, who co-wrote this, yeah, he co-wrote it. He he clearly wanted to let Frank deal with his ghosts and deal with this trauma in the special so that

he could be free to be the Punisher because when you, you know, if you're familiar with the comic books, he's, yes, he's this brutal killer, but it's a vigilante justice. It's not, and it's for everyone. He's not just focused on his own vengeance. And so he's not the vengencer, he's the Punisher. And so, which I know he's like helped out.

Steve Scarfo (09:17)
Yes.

Jeff (09:21)
Daredevil situationally, some other people situationally, but like how do we wrap this in a bow? This whole, you know, vengeance thing so he can move on to become the Punisher we might, a lot of people are familiar with from the comics where it's not just that one thing motivating him. So.

Steve Scarfo (09:44)
Yeah.

Yeah. And it's funny because, and I know we don't typically go beyond those two roles, but I do want to go a little deeper because I, I think the timing of this and you said it earlier, I think the timing of this has to be post-fisk. If you've watched, sorry, if you haven't watched the end of Daredevil season two, post-fisk, and obviously before the, the storyline of the next Spider-Man.

Right. So because we've all seen the previews of Spider-Man and we see that Punisher is part of that story, which grounds it again. We've talked a lot about the street level stories and this really just puts them together and it does set up that bridge. It bridges him from the brutality of everything that was and and he has that moment of clarity at the end of the episode. Like he he's killed everybody in the Newtchi family.

except for one person. Manuchi, played by Judith Light, who is funny because I've never seen her play. Yeah, I... Yeah, she's so usually like a goofy, lighthearted, fun-loving actress character, but she just played the evil bitch to a T. And she set up this whole hunt, which most of the episode...

Jeff (10:45)
So for my new G.

Really? I knew I recognized her. my God.

My God.

Yeah.

Steve Scarfo (11:09)
a good chunk of the 48 minutes, I think probably 20 is this battle for him to try to stay alive. And then he hears the voice of the little girl calling for help. Please help my daddy. And I think that's the trigger.

Jeff (11:24)
And

yeah, 100%. And all I can think of is we've talked about Batman, like can we stop hearing the origin story? And we've talked about Spider-Man, can we stop? Like that's what we liked about the new Tom Holland Spider-Man, was just, he's Spider-Man, we don't need the Uncle Ben thing again. And like I feel like this is doing that for the Punisher. We don't need to keep.

with the same origin story with the Punisher. Because there's been some great, John Bernthal's my favorite Punisher, I mean, there, Thomas Jane was, I thought he was good. And I know, know, even Dolph Lundgren, not that he's a great actor, but I mean, he made a good Punisher, but it's all the same vengeance story. So I think this is good that we're moving on.

Steve Scarfo (12:02)
Yeah.

Yes. Yeah.

Yeah, I really did. I think it did the trick too, because I think it gave us all that. should I want more? So my hope, I haven't read this, but my hope is that after the premiere of the next Spider-Man movie, that there is in fact another season of Punisher. I can't imagine that they've done all of this, not resurrect him, but they brought him into Daredevil to bring him back in.

They brought him into his own one shot to give this bridge so that he could be in the new Spider-Man movie. I can't imagine there's not a season of Punisher coming from Disney Plus with the rest of these stories. this is completely, we talk about how little we try to do for this and this is literally just off the cuff as we're talking about it. I have not looked it up. So if you guys are out there going, yeah, of course it's on all the sites, but I just haven't seen it. But that's my hope because.

Jeff (13:06)
No, I haven't seen

anything either, other than he'll be in the Spider-Man movie.

Steve Scarfo (13:12)
and I know it's one of the things on our list, cause I'm looking over here, but I did like that they brought Karen in from, from daredevil as well. So they bridge that storyline a little bit. It was, it was a quick hallucinatory sort of situation. They didn't overload it with cameos, but it was enough. thought.

Jeff (13:29)
Yeah, and Danzig's Mother is the song that kicks us off. So I'm always about soundtrack. And so that was a critical hit for me. If I could choose the critical hit. Danzig's Mother. Don't tell your children not to go out.

Steve Scarfo (13:37)
Yeah.

Yeah

And this is

a good this I'm so glad that you love the music so much because I liked the song and I I don't know that I recognize it so much as I like I love it worked perfectly with the scene. I never know who look this has been the joke for for our friend group from what time when I was like 1516 and we were we were working in Billy's Charter House Boyd and I we would be working on a Tuesday and would be two for Tuesdays and they would

play one song by a band and he would predict the next song. He was right more often than not. I never knew who sang anything. I knew the song, but when we were kids, I for some reason never identified, that's that band. I would always be like, hey, who sings this? And then I could go buy it. Usually a...

Jeff (14:31)
If it wasn't Gloria

Estevan, Steve didn't know it. Just kidding. Nice.

Steve Scarfo (14:34)
look the rhythm is gonna get you that's all i'm saying it will it will get you so

this turned in from this is this went from a punisher review to a revelation of my bad music choices throughout my life but

Jeff (14:42)
Ha ha ha.

All right, OGs,

support this through your viewership. If you haven't seen it yet, go watch the Punisher one shot. And so we can get more Punisher.

Steve Scarfo (14:52)
Yeah.

Absolutely. Always remember to like and subscribe, tell your friends, share this thing out. And if there's something that's out there that we haven't reviewed that you want us to review, let us know. We're going to jump on as many of these as we can. All right. So catch us in the next full episode. The next one is going to be about the boys. Boys!

Jeff (15:20)
The boys!