The Punisher is about to return to the big screen for the first time in almost two decades. Jon Bernthal is set to star as Frank Castle alongside Tom Holland’s Peter Parker in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and it’ll be interesting to see how such a dark, brooding, tortured antihero will fit into such a bright, colorful, family-friendly blockbuster. In his own solo projects, Frank is usually depicted as a cold-blooded killer turning his grief and vengeful rage into a Charles Bronson-esque vigilante crusade on the streets of New York.
So far, we’ve seen the Punisher adapted into three movies with three different actors (Dolph Lundgren, Thomas Jane, and Ray Stevenson, respectively), a TV series spun off from Daredevil, and, most recently, a streaming special called One Last Kill, which serves to reintroduce Bernthal’s Punisher before he appears in Brand New Day. So, out of these five Punisher projects, which one is the best?
5
The Punisher (2004)
The 2004 Punisher movie isn’t necessarily bad — it delivers the goods as a vigilante actioner, and Thomas Jane is a solid choice to play Frank — but it is, by far, the most vanilla Punisher adaptation out there. It arrived on that early-to-mid-2000s wave of Marvel movies hoping to cash in on the success of the X-Men, Spider-Man, and Blade franchises; it rode the wave with Hulk, Fantastic Four, Ghost Rider, Daredevil, Elektra, and it ranks somewhere in the middle of those hit-and-miss offerings.
But it’s just not brutal enough. It lacks the edge and the grit that makes the Punisher stand out from other Marvel heroes. It’s the same problem you see in those original Fantastic Four movies and the Ryan Reynolds Green Lantern movie: it takes really cool, really exciting, really different source material, and adapts it in the safest, most generic, most familiar way possible.
4
The Punisher (1989)
The Punisher’s first foray onto the big screen wasn’t as huge a hit as Spider-Man’s first movie or Batman’s first movie, but it’s not a total disaster, either. New World’s Punisher movie was a moderate success at the box office, it received mixed reviews from critics, and it’s since earned a much-deserved cult following. Dolph Lundgren plays the title character as a typical ‘80s action hero: a musclebound superman ruthlessly seeking frontier justice. It’s definitely a Stallone-ification of the Punisher, giving Frank Castle a Rambo/Cobra makeover, but unlike the ’04 movie, it does successfully recapture the grit and brutality of the Punisher comics.
It makes some extremely controversial changes to the source material, like removing the iconic skull from Frank’s chest and having him live in the sewers like Pennywise or the Ninja Turtles. But he’s every bit the cold-blooded badass he is on the pages of those comics. When we first meet Lundgren’s Punisher, he’s become notorious across New York City for executing 125 mobsters over the course of a five-year vigilante crusade.
This movie has all the biggest problems of ‘80s action cinema (it’s all flash, no substance; the acting is one-dimensional; the violence is almost cartoonish), but it shares its biggest strength (it’s an absolute blast). The Lundgren Punisher movie was a fan-favorite on the VHS market, and it’s easy to see why: it’s a ton of fun.
3
The Punisher: One Last Kill
The latest Punisher solo adventure is One Last Kill, a 50-minute special presentation on Disney+. In the years since Jon Bernthal’s Punisher show was cancelled by Netflix, his incarnation of the character has been rebooted in the mainline MCU. After his long-anticipated return in the first season of Daredevil: Born Again, Bernthal’s Punisher took center stage in One Last Kill to set up his supporting role in Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
The story it tells isn’t strictly necessary — Frank gives up being the Punisher, then circumstances force him to resume being the Punisher — but this special serves as a searing character study of Frank Castle. To Disney’s credit, they really let Bernthal and director Reinaldo Marcus Green go to some dark places with this special. It would’ve been easy for the Mouse House to order a lighter, more family-friendly Punisher adventure to introduce the character to young Spider-Man fans who want to know who his new crimefighting partner is.
But they actually let Bernthal make an unsettling psychological thriller about a soldier with PTSD grimly accepting his life as a righteous murderer. One Last Kill takes some huge swings, and it mostly knocks them out of the park (except for one really dodgy VFX shot). The narrative might feel a little repetitive, but it’s a welcome reintroduction to a darker, scarier Frank Castle who hates being the Punisher as much as he enjoys it.
2
Punisher: War Zone
The most comic-accurate version of the Punisher that we’ve ever seen on the big screen is the late, great Ray Stevenson’s turn in the criminally underrated Punisher: War Zone. Whereas the 2004 Punisher movie had been an attempt to water down the Punisher for a wider audience, the 2008 movie was produced under the Marvel Knights banner, specifically intended for mature viewers. Both Punisher movies were rated R, but War Zone pushed the boundaries of the R rating in a way its predecessor didn’t.
The previous Punisher movies had made some feeble attempts to convince the audience that Frank is a traditional hero in the right. But what makes this character so interesting is that he’s not always in the right; he’s often just as bad as the criminals he’s going after. The plot of Frank waging war against crime and corruption in the city paved the way for an appropriately violent, action-packed cinematic outing.
It might not be an especially great movie, but it is the best Punisher movie we’ve seen. Stevenson brings the right grizzled humanity to Frank, and director Lexi Alexander harks back to the action-heavy, dialogue-light simplicity of the ‘80s movie (and of all ‘80s action movies in general). War Zone is much more Punisher ’89 than Punisher ’04.
1
The Punisher (2017–2019)
Bernthal’s Punisher show isn’t perfect, but it’s still the best on-screen portrayal of the Punisher that we’ve ever seen. This version of the character had already gotten off to a very promising start alongside Charlie Cox in Daredevil season 2, and Bernthal ably stepped into the spotlight and carried his own show. The Punisher’s thrilling pilot episode drew Frank back into a life of violence in a modernized reimagining of the classic western Shane, and after that, it was off to the races.
The Punisher is its own show, separate from Daredevil, taking influence more from vigilante thrillers like Death Wish and Taxi Driver than the neo-noirs and cop shows that inspired Daredevil. But it did replicate one of the very best aspects of Daredevil: its gnarly, bone-crunching, ruthlessly intense, beautifully choreographed action sequences. Like Daredevil, The Punisher brings a refreshing brutality to its comic book spectacle, with The Raid-level choreography.
There were some storylines in The Punisher that went nowhere, some characters who acted inconsistently throughout the series, and since Netflix cancelled it so abruptly, it never got a proper ending. The biggest downside of this Punisher show is its lack of closure, but Disney could fix that in a jiff by renewing it for season 3. One Last Kill felt like a really great season 3 premiere…
