Villains aren't born, they're made by massive corporations in order to be in movies that try to turn them into antiheroes since actual heroes will never show up in them. Latest challenger entering the ring where a web connects them all is Kraven The Hunter, the sixth entry in SSU (Sony's Spider-Man Universe). Aaron Taylor-Johnson stars in this action thriller as the titular character, also known as Sergei Kravinoff, a manhunter and conservationist who gained superhuman powers in his teens after being brought back to life by a healing serum following a lion attack during a poaching trip.
When Kraven's kid brother Dmitri (Fred Hechinger) is kidnapped by Russian gangster Aleksei Sytsevich (Alessandro Nivola)—who goes by Rhino since he's able to transform into a human-rhino hybrid with his own special serum—Kraven must confront his dad Nikolai (Russell Crowe), a Russian overlord of a drug empire, whom Kraven left Dmitri with after gaining the powers. Hunted by Rhino and his powerful assassin The Foreigner (Christopher Abbott), Kraven must find a way to turn the tables, and he teams up with lawyer and voodoo priestess Calypso Ezili (Ariana DeBose) who gave him the healing serum all those years ago. Levi Miller and Billy Barratt play Sergei and Dmitri as teens respectively.
Acknowledging your expectations is crucial for any moviegoing experience but it cannot be understated when it comes to this particular film, which is directed by J.C. Chandor, written by Art Marcum, Matt Holloway and Richard Wenk from a story by Wenk, and based on Marvel Comics' works. The first bit of good news for all of them and for you is that it's not incompetently made like its universe buddy 'Madame Web' that really set those expectations extremely low earlier this year. No one in the cast is giving a terrible performance despite Crowe's only focus being his accent work. None of them are phoning it in in an unprofessional manner either as Taylor-Johnson commits to the bit, Nivola is actually making bold choices like you rarely see in these kinds of films nowadays, Abbott is a cool presence and even DeBose does what she can with outlandish dialogue and situations that her character is tasked with.
Filmmaking-wise, it's also not embarrassing. It's not ugly to look at like 'Venom: The Last Dance' is even though at times it gets close to being as chaotic as that project. And yes, there's some iffy ADR, to be fair, but thankfully not enough to swallow an entire performance whole like in Madame Web. Chandor and cinematographer Ben Davis use real locations effectively for most of the runtime, especially for action set pieces. This helps to ground the spectacle quite a bit, mainly because the visual effects (supervised by Richard R. Hoover) don't always meet the intended grit and realism that the film is reaching for. Most of it is fairly inoffensive stuff; nothing that earns groans but it's not anything that you'll remember in a few months.
With Kraven as a character, the writing tries to balance complicated family dynamics and how being surrounded by moral corruption can lead to violent responses that aren't always so black-and-white. As a result, the film has slightly more on its mind than its aforementioned SSU buddies, but the execution isn't engaging enough. Both the Kravinoff family drama and the action have the same exact problem—everything feels rather weightless. Part of that is the boilerplate dialogue that is used to unpack tensions between characters and it is just very boring to listen to, and another part is that most of the fights, explosions and VFX tricks have neither the required scope nor impact.
There's a short-lived moment where the filmmakers seem to be interested in delving into conservation and anti-poaching measures, which would've been something earnest and authentic for these specific characters, both in terms of character motivation and action choreography, but it's quickly put in the rearview mirror as we're back to the generic Russian machismo and crime operations. It's interesting that the most singular, even intriguing piece is The Foreigner, the one character that has no backstory, barely any dialogue and mysterious powers, which makes him a fascinatingly unpredictable foe. Otherwise, it seems like the film is allergic to inventiveness.
You can definitely see every now and then that some of the people involved were trying to ignite sparks, but there's no clear vision to be found in the end product and the film in general fails to create characters that you'd be invested in, underlined by the final shot that made me feel nothing personally. Thus, it also isn't a particularly memorable entry in the action thriller genre. The bar was in hell, and even though Kraven The Hunter clears said bar, it still remains in purgatory for movies that won't leave a lasting impact. It exists just for the sake of it.
Smileys: Nothing stands out
Frowneys: Characterisation
Do you have a strong Kraven for more supervillain stories?
2.0/5
Where to watch:
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