Kraven the Hunter Review

“A classic case of a decent filmmaker clearly not understanding the source material”

Apologies that this review is on the later side. I wasn’t able to make the single press screening offered earlier in the week, so I went to the very first public screening I could make it to earlier this afternoon. I really felt like I needed to see this movie, not because I had a paid assignment to review it or anything, but because I’ve been a Spider-Man fan for most of my life. Kraven the Hunter was never even one of my favored Spidey villains, but so many writers have done interesting things with him in relation to Spider-Man that hopefully can translate to film.

In this case, we meet Sergei Kravinoff (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) as he’s being escorted into a Russian prison that could easily have been the same one as the one we saw in 2021’s Black Widow, though Serge is just in there to kill the warden. We then flashback 16 years prior to watch him and his younger brother Dimitri being brought on an African safari by their Russian mobster father (Russell Crowe). The younger Sergei almost gets killed by a lion, only to be revived by a young woman named Calypso with a tonic that also gives him enhanced powers. 16 years later, Sergei is going around killing various poachers and mobsters, being dubbed “Kraven the Hunter.” He reconnects with Calypso (Ariana DeBose), now a lawyer who doesn’t approve of his techniques. Sergei’s brother Dimitri (Fred Hechinger) is now a singer, using his ability to mimic anyone’s voice, but he’s still favored by their father to the estranged Sergei.

When you go into a movie like Kraven the Hunter, there are certain expectations involved, not only due to the movie being moved around and delayed for so long, but also because these Spider-man tangential spin-offs that don’t actually have Spider-Man in haven’t really worked to date. Sure, we can watch them cynically by the fact that Sony Pictures is trying to do something with all the IP it acquired during the famed Marvel bankruptcy of the ‘90s. Even so, the idea of making yet another comic book origin story – this one spending a good 20 minutes on the younger Sergei not played by Taylor-Johnson – just doesn’t really feel like it add anything new to the genre. That’s probably a minor issue that I had with the existence of this movie.

J.C. Chandor is a fairly skilled director who has delivered at least three decent films (Margin Call, All is Lost, and A Most Violent Year), all of which he wrote, so it’s interesting to see him making a deliberate jump into a studio IP franchise film like this. I can’t really hold that decision against him, and this one comes from a story by Richard Jenk of The Equalizer movies with writing by Art Marcum and Matt Holloway (Iron Man, Uncharted). They clearly were given a mandate to include certain characters from the Spider-Man mythos, because in the comics, a few of them are actually connected.

One of those characters is Alessandro Nivola’s crazed assassin known as “The Rhino.” You can probably guess what’s going to happen with him, if you’ve seen the trailer and are familiar with the Spider-Man villain, who already appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, as played by Paul Giamatti. Christopher Abbott shows up as The Foreigner, another hitman that has some strange ability of counting and then transporting himself behind his target. They’re all trying to take down “The Hunter” before he kills again.

It’s not like there’s anything necessarily bad about the writing or any of the performances, other than whatever Nivola is doing, which is far more erratic than others, while Russell Crowe’s bad Russian accent is also pretty distracting. Abbott seems to be there merely for a paycheck, and DeBose is just there. (She does have one great moment and line that probably got the biggest audience reaction at my screening.) It’s just that everything is just throw at the viewer so matter-of-factly with very little intention of trying to make the movie even a remotely fun viewing experience. Amidst all the violent action and CG blood, there are many conversations about the activities of “The Hunter,” as well as the ongoing father-son conflict there, mainly to humanize Sergei.

In fact, this movie really didn’t have to be associated with any of the Marvel Comics, and could have instead been a pretty decent crime-thriller involving the Russian mob. As soon as you put in the names of famous Marvel characters and give characters superpowers, it’s impossible to avoid thinking how anything relates to the comics. For instance, I didn’t remember Kraven having much of a memorable origin story, nor did I ever really wonder or care whether he had powers or just was a hunter with good instincts. This movie just goes out of its way to show that he can climb buildings (like Spider-Man) and control wild animals (like Aquaman), which is where the sloppy visual effects kick in to make those things a reality. It’s almost as jarring as Crowe’s bad accent to watch Johnson walking up the side of walls using CGI.

Kraven the Hunter is a classic case of a decent filmmaker either not understanding the source material or just not caring, instead trying to do something different and creative while not delivering an experience that might work for its intended audience. It reminded me so much of Ang Lee, one of my favorite filmmakers, botching Hulk so badly.

Rating: 4.5/10

Kraven the Hunter is now playing in theaters nationwide.