Written by Richard Wenk And Art Marcum And Matt Holloway
Directed by J.C. Chandor
Sergei: "I stared Death in the face, and for the first time... I saw my true self."
Oh, Sony, you just never learn. For all the success of the Spiderverse animated movies and inadvertent success of a Venom trilogy, these Spider-Man adjacent movies have been more trouble than they're worse. The all too predictable failure of this movie really should put paid to any further films like this but I feel it likely won't.
Now, what exactly went wrong here? In some respects, there's a serviceable enough story but it feels like an executive at Sony saw the subversive of Cruella and thought they could replicate that with this character. There was potential for it to work but the idea didn't quite land as well as it should've done.
Our titular antihero, almost known as Sergei Kravinoff (Aaron Taylor-Johnson/Levi Miller) found out that his mother died and his father, Nikolai (Russell Crowe) was less upset about that than he would've liked. Nikolai also liked pitting Sergei and his younger brother, Dmitri (Fred Hechinger/Billy Barratt) against one another and an incident with a lion saw Sergei putting some distance with his family for a good sixteen years.
In the present day, Sergei became Kraven the Hunter while Dmitri's penchant for imitation had him as a lounge singer. It also got Dmitri kidnapped by both Aleksei Sytsevich aka Rhino (Alessandro Nivola) and the Foreigner (Christopher Abbott). It also had Sergei reunite with Calypso Ezili (Ariana DeBose/Diaana Babnicova) as she too found herself up in events.
In terms of the villains of the piece, there's four of them. Both Rhino and Foreigner provider solid and physical threats for our antihero but it's the misdeeds of Nikolai that set off the whole chain of events. It's also Nikolai's actions that saw about a villainous turn for Dmitri in a reveal that we're not likely going to see play out in the future.
As for Calypso, she did get some decent moments in the movie but it's a more subdued version of the character. Even the comic book romance between her and Sergei was mostly played down, though she did save his life at crucial points, so I have to give points for that alone. As for Sergei he certainly embraced a certain look by the very last scene of the movie.
- There's no mid or post credit scene and considering how this movie has bombed, that was a wise decision. I'm surprised Dmitri revealing his chameleon powers to Sergei wasn't used as one.
- Both Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Russell Crowe have previous been in the MCU as Quicksilver and Zeus respectively.
- Standout music: Dmitri does perform a rather nice version of Harry Styles Sign Of The Times in his piano bar.
- Chronology: Present day and sixteen years in the past. Scenes in Africa, Russia and London.
Kraven The Hunter ain't a great movie by any stretch of the imagination but it's not an entire car crash. It just feels a tad pointless but the action sequences are decent enough, though it's surprisingly longer than expected. Keep your expectations to a minimum and you won't be too disappointed.
Rating: 6 out of 10
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