IT’S AN INCREDIBLY high bar, but it’s possible that the last week or so represents the single best week of actor Jon Bernthal’s 25-year career of exhausting, near-constant work. On Tuesday, he returned yet again to his role as Frank Castle in a single-episode event of The Punisher (which he co-wrote) called One Last Kill, as the character prepares for his proper introduction into the Marvel Cinematic Universe in July’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Last week, a surprise prequel episode of The Bear (which he also co-wrote), dropped on Hulu ahead of that hit show (on which Bernthal appears in a recurring capacity in a role that’s won him a Best Guest Actor Emmy) debuting its final season in June. This all comes in the midst of his Broadway debut, where he’s stepped into Al Pacino’s shoes for a stage adaptation of Dog Day Afternoon. And, by the way, he has another film out in theaters in a few weeks, also an adaptation of a classic work: a little story called The Odyssey, directed by Christopher Nolan.
Bernthal doesn't step into this moment lightly, as the lottery-winning benefactor of some random confluence of events. Some actors find fame overnight, launched into the spotlight with a single great role, but Bernthal’s trajectory lies on the opposite end of that spectrum. It has been a slow and patient ascent, built on his talent first, but also his tireless work ethic and selflessness. Through the years, he’s been willing to show up in regional theater, mid-tier action flicks or indie dramas, and even random CBS primetime shows in thankless single-episode guest spots that he nonetheless manages to make feel at least a little bit special.
As I was putting the finishing touches on this list, I listened to a podcast dedicated to the late great star character actor Robert Duvall, and the first few decades of his career bear a startling resemblance to that of Bernthal, in his taste, and in his down-for-anything workaholism. Bernthal rarely works with collaborators once—reading through his CV means constantly tracing tangential links. There is connective tissue from co-stars to directors that indicate a talent adept at making an impression and warranting a callback for the next opportunity, often in an expanded role.
You can interpret Bernthal through regional accents: Georgia, Long Island, Chicago, or his closest to native, Delco, from growing up in the suburbs of D.C. If you’re a member of an ethnic group that has “become white” sometime in the last 120ish years, Bernthal has likely portrayed your people on screen at some point. He’s a chameleon, but one who toggles primarily between kinds of salt of the earth, thick-necked and square-jawed men, in and out of uniform, who frequently make regrettable decisions they can’t defend or fully understand. He has expressive eyes composed mostly of white; his irises swim in when he’s confused, or upset, or surprised, or selling you something with more desperation than a mark is supposed to see. He plays guys who are smarter than they look, characters with a touch more emotional intelligence than the history of guys like them on screen have led you to assume they possess, tough guys who will suddenly soften or melt should the situation call for it. His specialty is imbuing henchmen, meatheads, and scammers with a surprising dimensionality and soul.
In honor of Bernthal’s tremendous week, and career, the following is a definitive ranking of television shows, films, and Broadway plays he’s been a part of since 2010. The cutoff date is intentional and necessary. I doubt Bernthal himself would want to read an analysis of his work as “Greg” on a single episode of Dr. Vegas in 2005 or as “Man in Office” in the TV movie Revenge of the Middle Aged Woman in 2004. But I will apologize for this cutoff leaving his good work in Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center out, as well as his near-lead role in The Class—which turned out to be a star-packed network sitcom successor to Friends that never caught on (You can find it on YouTube—it’s actually pretty good.) That cutoff also leaves out whatever other hidden gems lie in his one-off TV appearances from the aughts I missed out of sheer laziness and in deference to the reader’s stretched thin attention span. (Apologies are also owed to what I’m sure was fine post-2010 work on the Kathy Bates detective series Harry’s Law, and the great David Krumholtz-led mathematician series Numb3rs. Both had episodes not up for consideration below).
So, enjoy this list. Ideally it will give the reader context and perspective for what is to be a glorious, long-gestating, Summer Of Bernthal.
40. Baby Driver, dir. Edgar Wright (2017)- “Griff”
Few once-beloved artifacts from the late 2010s have aged worse than this Fatboy Slim album visualizer disguised as a heist film starring Ansel Elgort and Kevin Spacey. As will often be the case on the list, Bernthal plays a douchebag, but like everyone in Baby Driver, he’s a cartoon character, the dumbest version of the type of character Bernthal would make his career wrong-footing us with. Here he’s an empty pre-distressed Ed Hardy T.
39. The Unforgivable, dir. Nora Fingscheidt (2021)- “Blake”
It’s shocking how many incredible actors came together to make this movie about Sandra Bullock trying to move on with her life after serving a 12-year bid for killing a cop. It’s a movie many would say “does not exist”—meaning it made such little impact that hardly anyone has any recollection of it coming or going back in 2021. For those who do watch it, well, it might make you wish it didn’t exist at all. It feels like something a movie studio would Ponzi scheme churches to send people to, but it’s on Netflix and not religious, aside for its sacred reverence for cops (The film could’ve and probably should’ve been called blue life matters). Bernthal is barely in this, as Bullock’s love interest at a salmon processing plant who has to keep his distance because he’s also on parole.
38. The Premise (s1 e2 “Moment of Silence”, 2021)- “Chase Milbrandt”
This was one installment of the single, five-episode season of BJ Novak’s impossibly bad short-lived 30-minute FX short-story project. Bernthal plays a grieving dad whose five-year-old daughter died in a school shooting, and then gets a job as PR director for the National Gun Lobby. He’s either not entirely locked in or playing it somewhat neutral through most of the episode because we’re not meant to see where it’s going. Like everything else connected to this quarter baked series, it doesn’t really work.
The Premise is not currently available to stream or watch online
37. Date Night, dir. Shawn Levy (2010)- “Young Man”
Bernthal shows up for a 30-second role in a very good studio comedy he isn’t very good in. Something we’ll return to occasionally throughout this list is that Bernthal can be funny, but rarely is when he’s overtly playing a scene for laughs, as he does here, and comes off as alternately blank and annoying.
36. Rampart, dir. Oren Moverman (2012)- “Dan Morone”
This is also barely a cameo, but a good early example of Bernthal stepping in as a random, very believable guy in a uniform.
35. Viena and the Fantomes, dir. Gerardo Naranjo (2020)- “Monroe”
A baffling, barely-coherent film starring Dakota Fanning as a groupie who tears a punk band—including Jeremy Allen White—apart. It has the look and energy of an odd, downbeat ‘90s indie student film made in 2014 that sat on the shelf for six years, which apparently wasn’t long enough. Bernthal shows up near the end as the slimy heavy and to his credit, seems to be one of the few people present that understood his assignment.
34. The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (s4 e7) (2019)- “Ilan”
An interesting and rare case of Netflix acting like a proper network and doing an NBC Must See TV crossover promo event episode with Kimmy Schmidt and the concurrently running The Punisher (Titus’s (Tituss Burgess) arc in the episode is that he has a yet-to-air single-line role as a doorman on Daredevil). This is another example of Bernthal not really up for the challenge of straight comedy, struggling with the rat-a-tat 60-laughs-a-minute patter of a Tina Fey comedy machine, here playing a *clears throat* former Israeli special forces agent doing oppo research on Titus.
33. Sharp Stick, dir. Lena Dunham (2022)- “Josh”
This misfire features Bernthal as an L.A. Dad bro married to a high-achieving woman, and also father to a son with Down Syndrome. It feels like Dunham’s version of a Todd Solandz/Tamara Jenkins/John Waters tawdry satire with a dash of Juno. It’s a tremendous piece of “hoodie acting” from Bernthal, complete with Ebon Moss-Bachrach showing up to remind us he was amazing on Dunham’s HBO hit Girls. I frequently enjoy Bernthal playing against type, but it’s not just hard to buy him as a self-loathing sad sack, someone who’s bad in the sack and insecure about his body (even if it’s bullshit schtick)—it’s impossible. He’s a gifted actor with range who can pull off a lot. Apparently simpering pathetic fuckboi isn’t on that list, though.
32. The Peanut Butter Falcon dir. Tyler Nilsson & Michael Schwartz (2019)- “Mark”
Shia LaBeouf, Dakota Johnson, and a great debut performance from Zack Gottsagen almost get this Huck Finn riff off the ground. Almost. It’s a baffling appearance from Bernthal, as a deceased big brother we see in wordless flashbacks, which feels like a role that was cut down in the edit suite. It also just may be a product of his professed love for Shia, born in a film we’ll get to further down this list.
31. The Ghost Writer dir. Roman Polanski (2010)- “Rick Riccardelli”
It’s Bernthal in affable suit mode, which he’s great at, as ghost biographer Ewan Macgregor’s agent in this bizarre mystery/satire.
30. American Gigolo (2022)- “Julian Kaye”
It’s a premise that’s pretty undeniable on paper, with Bernthal reprising Richard Gere’s role from Paul Schrader’s 1980 classic of the same name as a slut set up for murder. This TV version (which also features….Rosie O’Donnell and Wayne Brady?!) is an eight-episode Showtime series that was promptly canceled, and, honestly, rightly so. This is an end-to-end failure, often playing like a Lifetime dramatization of its source material. It’s soapy, dopey shit sans edge or intelligence, and I can say the same is mostly true of Bernthal’s performance as a hapless himbo, which perhaps can be at least partially chalked up to failures of writing and direction, but Bernthal clearly isn’t dialed in. It’s ranked here only because it’s hard to justify placing that much screen time behind middling to bad small roles and cameos.
29. Widows, dir. Steve McQueen (2018)- “Florek”
Bernthal appears briefly in this heist film as Elizabeth Debicki’s abusive creep husband in a tracksuit with a chin beard. He’s adequately menacing and lecherous, before almost immediately dying.
28. The Pacific (2010)- “Sgt. Manuel “Manny” Rodriguez”
The Pacific is another earnest prestige cable portrayal of a time brimming with optimism and belief in the American project that featured graphics styled like a Ken Burns documentary in the tradition of Band of Brothers, expanding on the everlasting appetite for more Saving Private Ryan-stylewar porn. This focuses on the Pacific theater, with Bernthal, presumably and unfortunately, whitewashing an unforced error of a fictional NCO in the first Marine division who is gone by the second episode, killed on Guadalcanal. As part of a sprawling cast in a 10-episode miniseries, this means he gets little to do. But he’s good in the time he gets, unsurprisingly is convincing in the helmet and fatigues firing a Tommy Gun, and you could look at it as an audition for a much meatier WWII performance in a different part of the world Bernthal would land a few years later.
27. We Are Your Friends, dir. Max Joseph (2015)- “Paige”
Another shady asshole in a track suit with a smoke show girlfriend in this ode to club kid culture in the 2010s. Bernthal is a real estate scammer who hires dudes to cold call foreclosing homes, taking advantage of people in desperate situations, paying the help in commissions. It’s an echo of a cheap penny stock shark we’ll get to later. This is an objectively goofy movie, but transportive to a time and place I didn’t mind revisiting, largely thanks to its star. Would love to see Zac Efron doing more stuff like this these days!
26. The Amateur dir. James Hawes (2025)- “The Bear”
A CIA nerd becomes James Bond to avenge his wife, who got caught up in some sordid business. We get Bernthal, who briefly bookends the film as a gruff bearded operator that acts as a friend to Rami Malek, speaking a little Russian here. This is the exact role I’m thinking of when we talk about his admirable work ethic and selflessness. He takes a part that doesn’t actually need to be in the film, and was clearly fluffed up for him, as a masculine contrast to Malek; He represents the traditional idea of what a spy is supposed to look like and how he’s supposed to carry himself. As usual, he does this job with a warmth and generosity that subverts your expectations.
25. Origin, dir. Ava DuVernay (2023)- “Brett Hamilton”
The first instance of a Bernthal character type I really appreciate and wish he’d do more of. I refer to it as “Lib Bernthal” or “Gooey Bernthal,” and he’s great at it. Here, he plays a sainted white husband to Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, a man who is soft, empathic, and freely emoting. His sudden, tragic death sends this adaptation of an Oprah Book Club selection into motion.
24. Sicario, dir. Denis Villeneuve (2015)- “Ted”
A perfect utilization of Bernthal—in a perfect film—as a Phoenix cop/cartel Honeypot piece of shit who seduces Emily Blunt, makes a dumbass mistake that gives him away, and nearly kills her before giving Benicio del Toro one of his many badass moments in the movie. He then gets leaned on/tortured by Josh Brolin and del Toro, and quickly folds.
23. The Many Saints of Newark dir. Alan Taylor (2021)- “Johnny Soprano”
This Sopranos prequel film marks perhaps the first time you could argue Bernthal had matured into a gravitas role, where it’s shorthand casting because the part itself doesn’t give him as much to do as you’d hope, given the last name. We meet him giving an appropriately dumbass version of a Godfather speech at a young Janice’s confirmation. He does get one incredible moment, dealing with young Livia Soprano (a masterful Vera Farmiga, who is also kind of doing her take on Edie Falco as Carmela) when he suddenly fires a gun over her head while driving a car—one of the crazier and more revelatory moments in Sopranos history. But the movie probably belongs to the great Alessandro Nivola, if the sprawling, unfocused curio belongs to anyone.
22. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl dir. Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (2015)- “Mr. McCarthy”
A cheap, incredibly annoying, post-Gondry quirk fest that I’m embarrassed to admit, even a decade later, when I fully know where it’s headed, still kind of worked on me again at the climax. It’s an aforementioned “Gooey Bernthal,” here as a cool, heavily-tattooed social studies teacher who comes off as a youth pastor. Bernthal is in Yo Teach!mode, but proves to be great at delivering heart-melting life lessons.
21. Dog Day Afternoon (2026)- “Sonny Wortzick”
This Steven Adley Guirgis stage adaptation of Sidney Lumet’s 1975 classic based on a real 1972 heist in Gravesend, Brooklyn sounded like a can’t-miss project when it was announced last year, reuniting old friends and frequent collaborators Bernthal and Moss-Bachrach; The two allegedly first worked together on Bernthal’s first professional job, with Bernthal stepping in as Moss-Bachrach’s understudy in a production of Fifth of July. It’s an adaptation you’d think translates pretty cleanly from screen to stage, and at least that part, with a rotating set design transitioning from one scene to another, is cool and quite well done. Bernthal steps into the Pacino role, and he’s a great stage actor who is quite good and magnetic, but the script lets him down, losing the anti-authoritarian streak and stunning sensitivity with which Lumet handled the film’s issues of gender and sexuality with 50 years ago. It also bizarrely barely takes advantage of Moss-Bachrach’s considerable talents as he’s in a near-silent role, confined to staring off in the distance in a back corner of the stage for most of the production.
20. Those Who Wish Me Dead, dir. Taylor Sheridan (2021)- “Ethan Sawyer”
It was perhaps too much to ask for Angelina Jolie to credibly portray a *checks notes* gritty devil-may-care Montana smokejumper in this mid, memory-holed, Covid-era casualty. But the real issue is the magic just isn’t there for this Taylor Sheridan-penned effort, which came out just as the mega-writer/producer was ramping up his TV universe for Paramount. That could possibly explain why Bernthal is so much less compelling in their third project together, in spite of it being his largest role of the bunch.
19. Mob City (2013)- “Joe Teague”
This was Frank Darabont’s short-lived, post Walking Dead attempt at making something along the lines of L.A. Confidential, elevating Bernthal to the lead alongside a stunningly-stacked-for-a-TNT series cast of character actor hitters, including Jeremy Strong, Simon Pegg, Ed Burns, Neal McDonough, Jeffrey DeMunn, Patrick Fischler, Dana Gould, and Mike Hagerty, among others. Bernthal plays a former Marine-turned-LAPD detective on an organized crime task force, and here he’s doing his version of an exposition spouting Guy Pearce in Confidential. Bernthal is good, but the series didn’t get the runway to really stretch its legs. Probably, for the sake of Bernthal’s career, this was for the best.
18. Ford v. Ferrari, dir. James Mangold (2019)- “Lee Iacocca”
You know what movie fucking rules? The legit “Dad’s Rock” classic Ford v. Ferrari. As the legendary Ford executive, Bernthal will make you angry he wasn’t on the scene early enough to warrant a half-season arc on Mad Men. His Iacocca is a Draperesque visionary trying to make Ford relevant and sexy for an emergent generation of Boomers and their disposable incomes, playing an incredibly grumpy cartoon car executive (a great Tracy Letts), like a fiddle. The only issue is he fades from the second half of the film, but I’d eagerly sign up for a Bernthal-led Iacocca biopic.
17. Show Me a Hero, dir. Paul Haggis (2015)- “Michael H. Sussman”
Not quite Gooey Bernthal but close. Here he plays a civil rights lawyer who’s also kind of an asshole, fighting a racist late ‘80s Yonkers to enforce a law to integrate by building low income housing on the white side of town. Show Me a Hero is yet another masterpiece of microfocused, panoramic civic storytelling from David Simon, but Bernthal is only in four of six miniseries episodes. Still, the performance clearly made an impression, as he’d return to a Simon project we’ll be discussing down the list as the lead a few years later.
16. Grudge Match, dir. Peter Segal (2013)- “Bradley James”
The idea is old Rocky vs. old Raging Bull, but ball knowers will properly credit this as the Copland reunion we’d been waiting for, between Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro. They’re washed-up geriatric boxers coming together in Pittsburgh for a heavyweight rematch decades in the making. Bernthal gets close to third billing, early for this point in his career, even with Alan Arkin as a trainer and Kevin Hart present as a Don King-type. It’s a film fishing for the early 2010s, still-lucrative Last Vegas, Wild Hogs, Best Exotic Marigold Hotel elder programming demo, the kind of movie where there’s expository dialogue explaining what “going viral” means. Bernthal gets to play De Niro's literal son, which you imagine he’s been dreaming of his entire life, and holds his own with good rapport and the occasional necessary pushback on his asshole father. I was shocked that I found the actual boxing scenes to be fairly convincing and entertaining.
15. Snitch, dir. Ric Roman Waugh (2013)- “Daniel James”
Snitch is a nightmare issue movie about mandatory minimum sentencing for drug charges and how it compels an informant network of low-level dealers constantly fucking each other to reduce charges they should have never been hit with in the first place. The Rock looks up the Wikipedia page for “drug cartel” at one point. Bernthal plays it straight as an ex-con who The Rock enlists/sets up to help him get his son out of a jam.
14. Small Engine Repair, Jon Pollono (2021)- “Terrence Swaino”
Bernthal is reprising a role he originated on stage a decade earlier in a play of the same name as a best friend New Hampshire townie in this flick from playwright Jon Pollono, who directs and stars and kind of looks like a drunk Gil Bellows. This is a truly insane movie. It is, no bullshit, Cheers + Manchester By The Sea + Saw. It’s on Netflix. Don’t Google it. Just clear out 100 minutes.
13. Pilgrimage, dir. Brendan Muldowney (2017)- “The Mute”
Pilgrimage marks quite possibly the biggest stretch of Bernthal’s career, prior to this summer. He plays a scarred mute with a cross tattooed on his back in this gray-washed, 13th century Irish Monk Crusade epic. It’s an odd duck, with a pop premise—a party of monk warriors is tasked with transporting a possibly magic holy relic across Rome—but is also dour and searching and decidedly anti-pop, dialogue-heavy despite frequent use of three languages and no subtitles. It’s a good visceral performance from Bernthal, but notable in his career because it’s where he developed his friendship with Tom Holland, one that will be at the forefront this summer in both The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day. On set, they allegedly filmed each other’s audition tapes that led to Holland getting Spider-Man and Bernthal getting The Punisher.
12. Shot Caller, dir. Ric Roman Waugh(2017)- Frank “Shotgun”
Waugh is a fascinating filmmaker. His aesthetic lands somewhere between David Simon and Bone Tomahawk and Dragged Across Concrete maestro S. Craig Zahler. He’s fully transitioned into Gerard Butler/Jason Statham schlock, but I’d like him to keep making movies like Shot Caller, dumb programmers with something they kind of need to say about American institutions and institutionalization. This is great Bernthal, as an Aryan brotherhood-type named Shotgun with a Nazi Eagle and swastika tats and a shaved head. He’s unsurprisingly a believable prison yard goon, but is also a snitch and gets a moment for his eyes to well up as he’s fighting for his girl's freedom.
A quick aside…
Shot Caller is among the better “bit scumbag part” performances from Bernthal, so in honor of Shotgun and all the hoods, thugs, and lowlifes Bernthal has rubbed elbows with in his filmography, a list, within a list:
A Definitive Ranking of the Biggest Scumbags Besides Jon Bernthal in Jon Bernthal Properties:
20. Norman Reedus - The Walking Dead
19. Josh Lucas - Ford v. Ferrari
18. Josh Brolin - Sicario
17. Ebon Moss-Bachrach - The Bear
16. Shea Whigham - Small Engine Repair
15. Shia LaBeouf - Peanut Butter Falcon
14. Robert De Niro - Grudge Match
13. Jon Hamm - Baby Driver
12. Alfred Molina - Show Me a Hero
11. Jonah Hill - The Wolf of Wall Street
10. John Lithgow - The Accountant
9. Alessandro Nivola & Corey Stoll - The Many Saints of Newark
8. Christopher Abbott - Sweet Virginia
7. Aidan Gillen - Those Who Wish Me Dead
6. Liam Neeson - Widows
5. Woody Harrelson - Rampart
4. Susan Sarandon - Snitch
3. Josh Charles, Bobby J. Brown & Seth Hurwitz - We Own This City
2. James Jordan - Wind River
1. Holt McCallany - Shot Caller
11. Sweet Virginia, Jamie M. Dagg (2017)- “Sam Rossi”
Back to our main programming. Sweet Virginia brings us a rare straight man performance from Bernthal, here up against the great Christopher Abbott playing a maniac hitman in a gritty Alaskan small-town drama that’s like ¾ of a movie with a screenplay that doesn’t really warrant its lyricism, but gets a good center-of-frame performance from Bernthal.
10. Wind River, dir. Taylor Sheridan (2017)- “Matt Rayburn”
Vintage single-scene Bernthal, here as a sensitive grunt, working security detail on an oil drilling site. He appears suddenly, late in the film in an unannounced flashback that unravels the film’s mystery in a harrowing scene. What I love about it is this scene opens with touching, completely unnecessary pillow talk between Bernthal and his Native American girlfriend, both about to fall victim to assault and murder. Bernthal waxes rhapsodic about Ojai, California, the place the real-life Bernthal lived for a decade (until recently), where he’s raised his family and launched a theater festival, that he had to have worked with Sheridan on. This means Bernthal was granted significant autonomy by Sheridan, who is pretty widely known as a “my way or the highway” kind of writer; This kind of leeway is not normal in his projects.
9. The Bear (2022-2026)- “Michael Berzatto”
If this list had been written in 2022, there’s a chance this role is far higher up. The Bear hides the ball for a bit before revealing Bernthal as the catalyst of the show’s premise, and he’s wonderful as a soulful fuck-up charisma bomb employed to maximum effect. The issue with the character, shown yet again with last week’s surprise prequel episode, is the more time you get with Mikey, the less you want to see him.
8. Fury dir. David Ayer (2014)- “Gray “Coon Ass” Travis”
Bernthal has now worked independently with both halves of the artists formerly known as Brangelina, the first time with Brad Pitt in this WWII tank movie from Ayer, best known for directing movies like End of Watch, was at something of a career peak. Fury plays like a vintage dirtbag Frank Miller or Alan Moore comic in neo-genre mode, if they cared about gritty Sam Fuller war programmers instead of superheroes. The movie opens with Brad Pitt stabbing a guy in the eye and a random soldier on fire blows his brains out to escape the pain. Bernthal is a mechanic trapped in a fucked up tank with LaBeouf, Michael Peña, and Pitt in a dudes being bros, breaking balls marathon that is darkly funny when it’s not incurably sour. The movie is deranged but Bernthal is great as a savage, oil-stained grunt.
7. The Wolf of Wall Street, dir. Martin Scorsese (2013)- “Brad Bodnick”
I’m not immune to conflating my love for a film with my love for a performance, so feel free to take this with a grain of salt. But Bernthal’s bit part in The Wolf of Wall Street easily could’ve gotten lost in Scorsese’s late career, late capitalism fantasia, but it deserves this lofty spot because for many of us, Brad selling us a pen was Bernthal’s “Star is Born” performance. And that’s for very good reason.
6. The Walking Dead- “Shane Walsh” (2010-2019)
For others, the “Star is Born” moment came a few years earlier, with Bernthal standing out as a brute who is quick to action in lieu of dealing with his emotions in a zombie post-apocalypse. He’s a kind of brutal, all-fight no-flight animal who treats himself to one more slash or bludgeon than necessary at an offending zombie, but manages to convey real pathos on this deep cable TV show during AMC’s glory years. Bernthal’s masterstroke was embracing and preferring a role he knew would last across two seasons rather than gun for the lead. It ends up serving as a representative vessel for Bernthal, because the show essentially is a microcosm of Bernthal’s charm: A dumb container for intelligent sensitivity.
5. King Richard, dir. Reinaldo Marcus Green (2021)- “Rick Macci”
This is near the closest you’ll see Bernthal to doing genuine character work with a personality and vibe entirely apart from any other character of his on this list. It’s also the best performance in the film by a considerable margin.
4. His & Hers (2026)- “Jack Harper”
This miniseries on Netflix that kind of came and went actually rocks because it so successfully subverts the Bernthal persona. It reminded me of Denzel Washington in Out of Time, playing a guy who is kind of a loser, whose dick has gotten him into a mess. Throughout the series he’s simply outclassed, lying through his teeth, and scrambling off his back foot to get himself out of the jackpot. The show is overripe and eventually devolves into ridiculous Kate Atkinson/Tana French shit that ends more times than Return of the King, but Bernthal and co-lead Tessa Thompson are undeniable.
3. The Accountant & The Accountant 2, dir. Gavin O’Connor (2016 & 2025)- “Braxton Wolff”
While the first Accountant movie started as an assassin flick with a twist better than you’d expect, we were treated to a full-blown Accountant franchise last year. In the sequel, Bernthal, who plays lead Ben Affleck’s little brother who is also a contract killer, gets elevated from third or fourth billed to one half of a proper two-hander. And he holds his own opposite Affleck with ease, bringing a totally different energy that the movie not only needed, but feeds off of. It was sound decision-making, with the odd couple brothers displaying instant, perfectly-pitched hot and cold chemistry. When you look over the entirety of this list, a relationship, be it romantic or familial, is never the primary concern of a Bernthal character… with the exception of this broken but mending brotherhood. The sequel is a lesser film than the original, and Affleck makes some head-scratching decisions in what was an understated depiction of his autistic superhero, but thanks to Bernthal the sequel contains the bigger heart, featuring a beautiful depiction of a neurotypical brother making peace with his feelings of resentment and abandonment, and ultimately embracing his big neurodivergent brother and their differences. It also whips ass.
2. The Punisher (2017-2026)- “Frank Castle”
The latest appearance of Bernthal as Frank Castle, in 2026’s The Punisher: One Last Kill, opens with his beard long, fingers bleeding, as he pushes through sets of pull-ups. He’s shredded and suicidal, haunted by the ghosts of his dead family and wracked with PTSD, while also chugging handles of cheap liquor, eventually vomiting and then tearing his run-down hobble apart. It’s the next evolution of Bernthal’s great, now near-decade spanning performance as Marvel’s famed gun nut vigilante, a pessimist who has given up on most of humanity. It also works in Bernthal’s filmography as a natural extension of Shane from The Walking Dead. The character is getting broader, heading further over the top, perhaps in preparation for a leap to the big screen for this summer’s forthcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day and beyond in the MCU proper, away from his more grounded street-level origins in the quaint Netflix days of Marvel streaming properties.
But that isn’t to say the creative team has sacrificed an ounce of the blood. One Last Kill is a John Wick 2 premise, under 50 minutes and more of an extended set piece than a proper story, with Wickian levels of gore and mayhem that make for truly R-rated carnage. They even blaspheme, using a sacred Pixar needle drop to soundtrack a gruesome shootout with impressive gun-fu fight choreography and a massive body count. It will represent a wild tonal swing if any of this energy finds its way into the Spider-verse.
Watch The Punisher: One Last Kill Here
1. We Own This City dir. Reinaldo Marcus Green (2022)- “Wayne Jenkins”
We Own This City is Bernthal’s scruffy, wide-eyed, feral, masterpiece. The series, which comes from The Wire mastermind David Simon, gives him the role he was born to play, a truly original and instantly iconic character. Throughout the course of the series, we watch Wayne Jenkins’s slow transformation from eager recruit to corrupt gun trace task force monster. Along the way, Bernthal brings to life God’s perfect Mid-Atlantic American swaggering dumbass, someone who sells his soul for a bushel of jumbo blue crabs and a rack of Natty Boh. He’s natural throughout, acting alongside Wire alumni and non-professional actors alike (in another incredible casting job by David Simon’s team). But what I really appreciate about We Own This City is that it once again captures a core tenet of Bernthal’s career: long-running collaboration. The director, Reinaldo Marcus Green, was also behind the camera for King Richard, and now has helmed Punisher: One Last Kill as well. It’s just one more example of Bernthal navigating the industry, picking up friends and lifelong collaborators everywhere his work takes him.
