Kraven the Hunter
Director: J.C. Chandor
Writer: Richard Wenk, Art Marcum, Matt Holloway
Based on: Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s character
Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger, Alessandro Nivola, Christopher Abbott, Russell Crowe, Yuri Kolokolnikov
Seen on: 16.12.2024

Plot:
Sergei (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), better known as Kraven the Hunter, does just that: using his supernatural powers, he hunts people, and kills the worst of the worst. He chose this path instead of taking over his father Nikolai’s (Russell Crowe) drug empire. But when his little brother Dimitri (Fred Hechinger) tries to follow in Nikolai’s footsteps and becomes a target himself, Sergei has to turn to Calypso (Ariana DeBose), who gave him his powers many years ago, for help in a very personal mission.

I did not expect much of Kraven, but I swear the film is even worse than I feared. It feels soulless and that makes it boring.

Look, I knew I wouldn’t be getting a great film when I opted to go to the cinema to see it, but I will do a lot for Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and the movie poster promised abs, so that convinced me. But before you make the same mistakes I did: there is disappointingly little skin shown in the film, and even if there were more of it, I doubt that it would make the experience worth it.

That is not to say that the film doesn’t have moments. It does. Mostly, they are involuntary moments though. At least I don’t think that it was intended that Russell Crowe’s cravat should have been a contender for best supporting actor. Or that when Nikolai asks Dimitri to pour “a real man’s portion” of vodka, the ridiculously small amount in the glass we see being poured gave me the belly laugh of the month.

There is a lot going on in the film and little of it is good. There is the fact that Crowe and Nivola seem to be in an entirely different movie than everybody else, namely the overblown one that would have been fun to watch. Or the blatant racism in Kraven’s origin story with its depiction of voodoo and Africa. Or that Taylor-Johnson gave all his acting skills to perfecting his Russian accent (to me as a non-native but Russian learner for many years, the end result is pretty good), eschewing things like emotional depth or comedic timing.

To be fair though, that is pretty much what the script gave him to work with because the script doesn’t seem to understand its characters, nor does it seem to care. And it isn’t alone in that – nobody seemes to have cared much about any of it. So why should the audience?

Summarizing: forgettable except when it’s so bad, it’s funny (which doesn’t happen often enough to make it worth it).