Kraven the Hunter is the latest addition to Sony’s (wildly unsuccessful) live-action Spider-verse movies. The action-packed superhero flick directed by J.C. Chandor is based on Marvel’s Spider-Man comics. It tries its best to portray the origin story of its titular character as a Spider-Man villain. Kraven is played by Aaron Taylor Johnson, who is known for his performances in Bullet Train and Avengers: Age of Ultron.
According to several sources such as Game Rant, Chandor made a plea to the audience through ComicBook.com to give the film a shot. We’re here to see if this was worth it. I will say that the audience in the cinema on opening day was just me and my two friends (YIKES!!).
Summary (Minimal Spoilers)
The film opens with Kraven in a Russian prison, which he manoeuvred his way into as part of a mission to kill a gangster named Seymon Chorney (Yuri Kolokolnikov). Here, we find out two key things: firstly, he is insanely dedicated to his craft and secondly, he is not a normal man.
After the assassination and prison break, the film transition into scenes from Kraven’s childhood, where we learn that Kraven (birth name: Sergei Kravinoff) was born to a wealthy gangster family. His family now is just his father, Nikolai (Russell Crowe), and his brother, Dimitri (Billy Barratt), because his mother killed herself to escape life with his father. As you may be able to tell, both brothers have a severe case of daddy issues. Their father is a classic macho man, and part of his act is hunting in Africa.
On a hunting family trip, Nikolai gives his young boys the task of killing a lion to basically prove that they are real men. Long story short, Sergei (aka Kraven) gets absolutely mauled because he refuses to shoot the lion. We are introduced to the character Calypso (Diaana Babnicova), a young girl Kraven’s age, who is on a safari with her parents. With some voodoo life-saving potion from her grandmother, she heals Kraven, despite not knowing who he is.
Kraven, now superpowered by the potion, runs away from home because he does not want to take over the family gangster business. He then makes it his life’s purpose to brutally murder people who do wrong in the world with his Tarzan-esque abilities. He fancies himself an unbeaten vigilante out there. He has a hitlist and everything! The only thing about him that isn’t so unbeaten is his family drama, which we see further unfold in present day.
I can’t lie, I was very much following the movie for most of the runtime, but I lost the plot with that ending. You’ll see what I mean if you watch it. They were clearly setting up for a sequel that the film might not get, at this point.
Technical Analysis
Visual effects: These are pretty decent. The jungle animals look better than the live action Lion King in my humble opinion. The effects in the action scenes mostly do a good job of convincing me that Kraven is superhuman (although they sometimes walk the line of believability).
Sound & music: What I like most is the use of diegetic sound in a scene where he’s going up an elevator. The rhythmic dings create the right amount of tension and suspense. There was not really anything spectacular about the music, but it served its purpose.
Mise en scène: The primary locations showcased are Russia, London, New York and the African grasslands. My favourite scenery was New York because it contrasted the jungle that Kraven is so accustomed to. You could sense that he was out of his element there. Kraven’s costume design definitely suits the character’s badass personality.
Cinematography: During the action scenes, we see variations of long shots, closeups and tracking shots. The long shots, for example when Kraven scales a New York building, distract us from how ludicrous the scenes are. The whole time, I found myself asking how exactly Kraven pulls off some of these stunts of his. The long shot, in my opinion, made it so that less questions were asked about the nitty gritty. A 'missing the trees for the forest' type of thing.
The closeups truly earned this film its R-rating. My goodness, were they gory!
For the tracking shots, if I may put on my high school English Literature hat on for a moment, were very much giving ‘nature documentary’, which fits the movie perfectly if that was the director’s intention. Another thing they do is focus our attention on the titular character.
Performance Analysis
Aaron Taylor Johnson and Russell Crowe give great performances, as I was expecting. Crowe especially hustles to maintain that thick Russian accent from the start of the movie to the end, so props to him. ATJ carries the role of the morally-grey character with a commanding presence in his gait, posture and diction.
Additionally, the acting of Christopher Abbott as the Foreigner and Alessandro Nivola as the Rhino really stuck out. You certainly feel the mad scientist personas radiating through the screen. Personally, my friends and I were the right amount of creeped out in their scenes.
When it came to character development, the progression of adult Dimitri made perfect sense, given his daddy issues. However, his character as a child and as an adult felt a bit disconnected. This is the one that stood out the most as being a little strange.
With regards to chemistry between the actors, most of it felt quite palpable, and though the chemistry between the child actors of Dimitri and Sergei was convincing of a close brotherly bond, that between the adult Kraven and Dimitri left something to be desired. That seemed inconvenient, considering a large portion of the overall story is built around their dynamic.
Evaluation
We know that when it comes to Sony’s Spider-Man and Spider-Man-adjacent movies (especially the ones with no actual Spider-Man…cough cough….Morbius), there are few hits and several misses.
Therefore, it would be a little unfair to judge it as a Spider-verse movie when the bar is clearly 6-feet under.
As a superhero film and film overall, I found it not great, but not horrific either. Honestly speaking, the bar for superhero movies in recent years has also been deep in the trenches.
This movie came off as an unintentional comedy during a few of the action scenes because of how in-credible they were. As in, they lacked credibility. The plot convenience and suspension of disbelief just became too much at a point.
Final Verdict
6.5/10 rating as a non-comic book fan. Not exactly the film to beat all films, but I appreciate that it was not a complete waste of two hours of my life.
Kraven the Hunter offers a whole range of Spider-Man villains for the price of one, yet not a single Spider-Man appearance. I suppose Tom Holland’s schedule was too booked for this one.
Still, this entry is the lesser of Sony’s Spider-verse atrocities. Sony must still answer for the crimes that were Madam Web and Morbius.
And that is my very unsolicited film review.
(Data on the cast was sourced from IMDB).
-Rebecca Opio
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