- Title: Kraven the Hunter
- IMDb: link
Following the lackluster Morbius and the disastrous Madame Web, and limping into theaters as the news breaks that Sony is abandoning it’s wider Spider-Man Universe comes Kraven the Hunter starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson as super-villain Sergei Kravinoff reimagined here as something closer to the Punisher targeting, hunting down, and murdering criminals like his father (Russell Crowe). If there’s praise to be levelled at Kraven, it’s that the film is better than either Morbius or Web. However, that’s a dubious distinction.
The Kraven storyline, both his current hunting of criminals and his past told in flashbacks with Levi Miller playing the younger Sergei explaining his complicated relationship to his family and how he acquired his powers, is awkward at times and goofy to be sure, but it’s mostly B-movie nonsense that you might be willing to shrug off for the most part as dumb fun. However, every other aspect of the film is markedly worse. What’s interesting here is the character works well enough to be incorporated elsewhere under better hands than those of director J.C. Chandor which, apparently, is unlikely to happen at this point.
Ariana DeBose is an Oscar-winning actress, but you’d be hard pressed to guess that from her role of Calypso whose family magic is responsible for the creation of Kraven in the wilds of Africa but later is just a lawyer the hunter tracks down to help him track down others. (I thought he could track down anyone? Doesn’t he say that multiple times in the movie? Why does he need a lawyer’s help?). The script does DeBose no favors giving her uninspired dialogue and nothing to sink her teeth into.
Fred Hechinger doesn’t fair much better as Sergei’s brother whose role in Marvel Comics is well-known. He only becomes interesting in the epilogue teasing a plot thread that apparently will be left dangling forever that also doesn’t quite jive with everything that’s come before. The cowardly brother’s only real use in the film is to tie Kraven back to his family providing someone for his enemies to target.
We also get Christopher Abbott as the Foreigner, an assassin tracking Kraven for a personal vendetta who has an interesting power set although he is pretty bland, and Alessandro Nivola in the film’s worst performance as would-be crime boss Aleksei Sytsevich in what is just remarkably stupid storytelling from every perspective imaginable.
If this be the end, Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (other than than the Tom Holland Spidey films have greater Marvel Studios input) goes out with a whimper. Kraven the Hutner is a bad film, laughably bad in some respects, but there are aspects to the character and Taylor-Johnson’s performance that suggest under different circumstances something could be made from the film’s ashes. Maybe not something all that good, but quite possibly a passable enough B-movie flick fans of the character could enjoy.
Watch the trailer
