In a lonely grieving state he pours himself into Spider-Man's crime fighting and becomes a trusted hero to the City, with a hotline to the Police and a list of defeated wronguns.
When an unknown actor tries to break in to the Dept. of Damage Control by seemingly possessing bystanders, Spider-Man manages to save the day, just. No thanks to Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) who has his own particular way of dealing with things.
I've always had a soft spot for the Spider-Man movies and this is one of the best of the live action ones.
Being a soft reboot of sorts for the character, but not the world, it solves the problem of obscene over-connectedness that now plagues the MCU. There are links to established characters but they are very unidirectional and make sense in context.
Destin Daniel Cretton balances the needs of a family friendly MCU instalment with action sections while also having a real go at dealing with the sacrifices Peter made when he cut himself off from everybody for years.
Cast chemistry goes a huge way here, obviously and this was excellent even from the first movie when the two leads weren't married.
The heavily trailed stuff about Peter 'evolving' is the least interesting thread and kind of fizzles out but the 'generic MCU action' bits are all well done.
We get good use of Bernthal as a grumpy uncle figure without really diluting his Punisher credentials. It's a shame his recent streaming outing was a tiresome as fuck violent rampage.
Nothing here deeply surprises, but it also dodges a couple of bad expectations I had, 9/10 because it really delivers what you want from a Spider-Man movie.