Much like fellow Johnson, Dakota, Aaron Taylor-Johnson has his heroic potential thwarted (and how!) in the long-delayed Kraven the Hunter, a misguided actioner that ends Sony’s Spider-Man Cinematic Universe with the type of whimper we’ve come to expect from this poor Marvel offshoot that wasn’t even allowed to feature the very character it based itself around.
After a trio of Venom films that dwindled in quality over their release, Jared Leto’s embarrassing Morbius, and this year’s early misfire Madame Web, Kraven the Hunter is arriving at a point where any excitement over these anti-heroes and their origins is at an all-time low. It also doesn’t help that after multiple release delays, J.C. Chandor‘s well-intentioned actioner is fighting its way into theatres just as Sony announce the end of this series, which only adds further incentive for audiences to not check out something that literally has no future, despite the fact that the Richard Wenk–Art Marcum–Matt Holloway-penned script sets up a clear sequel at the tail-end of the film’s testing 127 minutes.
It admittedly starts off on a promising enough note as Kraven the Hunter, a nicknamed bestowed upon Sergei Kravinoff (Taylor-Johnson, letting his masculine charm and chiseled physique do a lot of the work), the eldest son of crime lord Nikolai Kravinoff (Russell Crowe, continuing his bizarre late-career penchant for heavily accented figures), violently breaks out of prison, having put himself in there to merely kill off one of the many criminals he takes it upon himself to rid the world of. It’s an exciting-enough sequence that highlights Taylor-Johnson’s physicality and the film’s willingness to show blood; I’m sure Kraven the Hunter‘s adult rating is a way of tricking audiences into thinking how cool it is that it’s committing to violence.
You can see how Kraven the Hunter could make an intriguing-enough film, with the father-son dynamic between Sergei and Nikolai suggesting a dramatically violent temperament, and the fact that Sergei justifies his killings by the fact that he’s only slaughtering the world’s evil; think of him as a more brutally minded Robin Hood. Sadly, whatever faith the audience may have in the first 10 minutes of the movie slowly dwindles as Chandor loses hold of Wenk’s story; though with all the delays surrounding the film, it’s difficult to determine if the usually capable director is to blame.
After the film spends far too much time on Sergei as a teenager (Levi Miller playing the younger version), where we learn he developed his super-human abilities through the mixture of a lion attack on a wilderness hunting excursion and the voodoo ways of meddling teen Calypso (Diaana Babnicova), the present day setting ultimately becomes a mash of Sergei fighting bad guys, attempting to save his over-looked little brother, Dimitri (Fred Hechinger), in the process.
Why Dimitri is in the firing line becomes all a little too convoluted, as does the clarity on just who the film wants to paint as its lead villain. Nikolai is set-up as an evil force due to how he treated his sons, but he disappears for such large portions of the film that you often forget he’s lingering in the background. Aleksei Sytsevich (Alessandro Nivola, seemingly very aware of what he’s signed up for) has classic main villain energy, especially as the mercenary reveals himself to have a superhuman condition that allows him to transform into a rhinoceros-like creature, but he too starts to play second fiddle to Christopher Abbott‘s mysterious assassin The Foreigner. Rocking a turtle neck, a superhuman ability that’s never really explained, and an expression that very much screams “What am I doing here?”, Abbott and his character feel lost in a movie that’s already struggling with an identity crisis, and as much fun as there is to be had in enjoying Kraven the Hunter‘s so-bad-its-good qualities, there’s a lack of basic cohesion that further frustrates.
But, perhaps, nothing frustrates – or proves as unintentionally hilarious – as much as Ariana DeBose‘s presence. With a well-deserved Academy Award under her belt, the post-Oscar curse that seems to plague many a star is doing the most in the case of her career as of late, with her turn as the grown-up Calypso asking more questions than can be answered. The script is unsure as to who it wants Calypso to be in Kraven’s orbit. At one stage it would seem logical she’s set up as a love interest, but nothing in the final product suggests even the slightest romantic inclination; despite their aesthetic luck, the chemistry between Taylor-Johnson and DeBose is non-existent. Their characters locking fates as teenagers means she could have been utilised as a type of Alfred-to-Batman assistance too, but, again, the story is at a loss with what to do with her, so much so to the point that she could be eradicated from the film altogether and nothing would particularly change. And on an acting front, DeBose, Academy Award winning DeBose, is laughably awkward, with her ridiculous wardrobe entirely unbecoming for an apparent lawyer and saddled with painful dialogue that is further exacerbated by evident ADR that sounds entirely unnaturalistic.
All that being said, as much as the bad outweighs the good in Kraven the Hunter, there are still nuggets throughout that deserve their flowers – even if the movie as a whole deserves to be buried in the dirt. The action, uninspired as it is, at least enjoys the fact that it can indulge in a little body-ripping and machete wielding. The created world, as much as we don’t have enough time to explore, suggests that there was, perhaps, a modicum of inventiveness in an early draft; the glass dome Kraven lives in in the depths of the wilderness is non-sensical but admittedly inviting. And Taylor-Johnson is truly giving it all he can to move this along. He’s enviably handsome and hones the perfect action physique (yes, we get a classic shirtless-turn-to-the-camera moment that would’ve played to hoots and hollers from the audience, had this played to a crowded room) for the genre. He’s just saddled with the wrong material. Or, probably more correctly, playing in the wrong studio sandbox.
There were clearly big plans for the Sony Spider-Man Universe, and it’s almost impressive how, collectively, each project outside of the new Spider-Man trilogy entirely botched their intentions. Making their villains into heroic-like figures took away any of the intrigue from the get-go, and it would seem that it was that initial interest of an anti-hero that drew in so much of the collective talent this series has entirely squandered. If you’ve seen the Venom trilogy, Morbius and/or Madame Web, there’s no reason that you shouldn’t brave Kraven the Hunter – it’s arguably more watchable than the majority of the aforementioned titles – but with the announcement of a franchise dead on arrival, you’d be forgiven for cravin’ something of substance instead.
TWO STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Kraven the Hunter is now screening in Australian theatres.
