The Punisher - Season 1 Review
This post contains minimum spoilers for The Punisher Season 1.
The Punisher is by far the most violent and darkest Marvel Netflix series to date. To this point in the Netflix Marvel universe, we have experience a blind ninja, a woman with super strength, a man with unbreakable skin (and super strength), and a warrior of K'un-Lun (you can skip that one). After being introduced in Daredevil Season 2 as the first antagonist and a secondary protagonist, Frank Castle has returned to fulfill his one goal and finish the war he started: avenge his family.
To start, Jon Bernthal's portrayal of the man himself is quite frankly the best portrayal of this character ever put to screen. The way he portrays the heart pounding loss that occurred in his past, and the subtle anger towards his own actions is just incredible. Outside of Bernthal though, there are great portrayals all around. Two people that are worth discussing are Billy Russo (Ben Barnes), and Dinah Madani (Amber Rose Revah). Billy Russo is Frank's best friend from their time in the military, working on multiple different operations together, including one specifically known as Operation Cerberus which plays a major role in the series. Ben Barnes portrays him well, a smug man with a knowledge of combat and the creator of a private military force known as Anvil. Dinah Madani is a Homeland Security agent, who gives the audience a different set of eyes to look at this conflict that Castle is creating. Amber plays her well and she portrays Dinah's knowledge of how to sidestep the law when necessary but when to play by the rules.
As stated above, The Punisher is extremely dark and violent. While the trailer for this show portrays it as merely a festival of explosions and gunfire, these scenes are actually extracted from a few specific episodes. Frank is has knowledge of many different combat forms and this is brought to light in multiple critical moments. During Homeland raids, and even small disputes that revolve around Frank trying to gather information about his old squad mates, the gore is a huge factor. The thing The Punisher does well though is that it never just uses the violence as a means to convey the story. Frank as I have said is a lost man and you can see every time he fights that he is in pain and this is the only way he knows how to fix his issues. When people see what he is doing around the city and that action isn't being taken to help other veterans they take his message wrong, and look to take matters into their own hands. This leads Frank and Homeland to be leading a messy confrontation on multiple fronts, with their own corruption and with people who believe they are looking out for the greater good.
Visually, The Punisher plays very much into the tones we recognize from other Marvel Netflix series. Dulled colors and the cover of night are frequent throughout the series. This fits with the Punisher, as it reflects on who Frank is as a person and the world that he lived in. He lived in the shadows, in a world that wasn't widely known and approved of. When color is used it is specifically noticeable, and the tone of the scene plays to that use of color. Happy and joyful scenes are linked to the use of color and it helps to accentuate that ideal.
One specific character that I left out of my opening discussion of the standout characters is that of Micro. He is Frank's resident hacker throughout the series (seeing as Frank isn't truly a man of scientific know-how as you can imagine). This is not where his story ends though, as Frank is just as much intertwined with Micro as he is with his old squad mates. Micro's arc while I can't speak much about it, is one of the stronger of the series and scenes involving his past were always something I looked forward to throughout the series.
I've been looking around the web at other reviews of this show and it seems to be apparent that this show misses the mark due to it's portrayal of guns. While I can understand that in today's world this is definitely a risky subject to put on screen, I believe it is handled well. The only negatives I truly felt throughout the series was the sometimes shoe-horning of previous characters throughout the series to provide a sort of emotional pull that didn't feel necessary. Along with this the first few episodes are rather slow to get going and are more of world building for Frank and the others, resulting in a bit of a tough start to an otherwise great series. If I were to single out any specific group who many not enjoy this it would be those who are shy of violence as there is much more than any of the previous series. Outside of that, The Punisher is great and fits well into an ever expanding group of Marvel Netflix series.
8.5/10
