‘Kraven the Hunter’ review: another snack prepared without love in a sedimented genre
Director: JC Chandor | Script: Matt Holloway, Art Marcum, Richard Wenk | Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Sergei Kravinoff/Kraven), Ariana DeBose (Calypso), Fred Hechinger (Dmitri Smerdyakov), Russell Crowe (Nikolai Kravinoff), Alessandro Nivola (Aleksei Sytsevich/The Rhino), each | Playing time: 127 minutes | Year: 2024
When villains suddenly become protagonists of their own movie, the advantage usually disappears immediately. The main character reinvented cruella would never kill Dalmatian puppies, even though its animated predecessor had it as part of its evil plan. But what to do with a character who is known as a hunter? In fact: a character where that word is part of his name. Simple: let him hunt people.
Traditionally, Kraven the Hunter is a famous big game hunter who sets out to prove that he is the best hunter by capturing Spider-Man. A nice and ridiculous fact, which makes him perfectly suitable as a supervillain. But not as a main character. When this character was created sixty years ago, people already had some doubts about hunting big game, but today this is totally abhorrent. But hey, that’s the character’s name, so you have to do something with him. At least, if you really think it’s necessary to make your own movie about every Spider-Man villain.
The half-hearted solution is that Kraven, sorry Sergei (Kraven is his alter ego), grew up with a father who tried to pass on his great love of hunting to his children. For young Sergei, this resulted in a fatal collision with a lion, after which a magical substance from an African tarot reader (yes, really) not only brought him back to life but also provided him with superhuman strength and abilities. .
By the way, that lion is computer animated and looks no better than the one the computer first created almost twenty years ago. narnia-movie. Unfortunately, it’s not the only wild animal there. Kraven the hunter that’s not convincing. It’s quite understandable that filmmakers would prefer not to work with deadly animals, but as long as the technology isn’t (yet) available to put a credible digital variant on the screen, it’s never really going to be exciting.
Although Sergei deals with some people killing wild animals for no good reason at the beginning of the film, the writers apparently go too far by allowing him to actively pursue hunters and poachers. Instead, he mainly hunts the usual bad people: drug dealers, weapons dealers, you know the drill. Why exactly? No idea, it must have something to do with his father’s criminal career.
The woman who gave him his superhuman powers is now a lawyer at a firm that not only represents righteous people. Sergei recruits her because she could help him find the people he can’t find. However, about an hour later, he confidently proclaims, “I can find anyone.” It’s good that he doesn’t practice false modesty, but that statement emphasizes the redundancy of his accomplice. The character primarily acts as a sounding board for soloist Sergei.
A nice boost is that, for once, there’s no need to defeat a megalomaniacal villain with a deadly plan, but rather Sergei simply has to free his younger brother from a group of gangsters. That brother is clearly less strong and brave than Sergei, but fortunately he is not the despicable rich son of a Russian gangster that Hollywood usually portrays. At least, as long as the film dares. In the end, some unnecessary development is forced in, in the hope that a possible sequel can do something with it.
Until that unnecessary change, Fred Hechinger is the only one who has a chance to inject some humanity into the film in this role. Everyone else shows little participation. As a shadowy Russian gangster, Russell Crowe speaks on autopilot, while Alessandro Nivola, as his competitor, brings some joviality but never becomes truly interesting. In the lead role, Aaron Taylor-Johnson still does quite well, although promotional interviews probably won’t talk about the acting challenges, just the amount of time he’s spent in the gym.
Not everything Kraven the hunter It’s bad, but none of it surpasses mediocrity. The characters are functional, but not very memorable. The action scenes are clear, but rarely spectacular. The dialogue doesn’t sound completely ridiculous, but it doesn’t come to life either. Twenty years ago you could dismiss a film like this as a nice snack, but now it mostly feels like an exhausting obligation.
In any case, everything is a little gorier than usual in the superhero genre. But with a hero who can handle everything, it never becomes exciting. The superhero genre has no longer guaranteed financial success for some time, so the creators are probably the only ones Kraven the hunter They will experience it as exciting: sweating over whether they will get their money back.