Kraven the Hunter, directed by J. C. Chandor, is an enjoyably heavy-handed action-fantasy based on a Marvel Comics villain whose source material arguably doesn’t offer a whole lot to hang a movie on.
Kraven, it turns out, is currently slated as the last entry in Sony’s mixed-results attempt at taking the premise of Garfield Minus Garfield and applying it to a Spider-Man Universe minus Garfield (or any other onscreen Spidey).
I’m well on the record as being a huge fan of the Venom trilogy despite my initial hostility to the concept. Those movies were such a blast and offered such a great dynamic between Eddie Brock and Venom that that they fully won me over, so I’m open to good things coming from Sony’s experiment. I had similar indifference to a Kraven movie which sounded even less compelling – but the red band trailers depicting a hard R action piqued my interest.
“Kraven” is the alias of Sergei Kravinoff (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), the embittered son of a Russian mob boss (Russell Crowe). While on safari in Africa with his father and brother as a youth, Sergei had a near-death experience which unlocked superhuman abilities, and shortly after left the family to instead act as a vigilante taking down poachers, gangsters, and evildoers – basically people who remind him of his father. If this sounds a bit familiar, it’s a lot of the same framework as 2021’s MCU entry Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
The film opens with a killer prison break action sequence that introduces Kraven and his talents – as well as those of Aaron Taylor-Johnson who looks totally fit, is primed for the action, and speaks Russian beautifully (to my non-Russian-speaking ear). He’s quickly established as a fun character to watch.
Although he treats his father with contempt, Sergei still loves and keeps in touch with his sensitive and put-upon younger brother Dmitri (Fred Hechinger, who, shout out, is enjoying a heck of a breakout year with Gladiator II and Thelma). The film’s main plot deals with Kraven going to war when his brother is kidnapped by mobsters. He also tracks down Calypso (Ariana DeBose), a young woman who was instrumental in how he originally attained his powers, and whose current work intersects with his own.
The film’s best trait is that it goes harder on the action than most comic book fare, eschewing a PG-13 rating and serving up some fun and bloody kills. Kraven has honed instincts and superhuman strength and agility, but his skills as a “hunter” (of humans) are also Rambo-esque, wielding a knife and setting deadly traps.
This is, in loose terms, a Marvel movie, and the villains include The Foreigner (Christopher Abbott) and Rhino (Alessandro Nivola). I did like how this version of Rhino was depicted, physically augmented rather than a guy in a costume.
Unfortunately the connection to Marvel Comics is perhaps the weakest aspect of the movie, simply inviting comparison and complaint – this mostly heroic version of Kraven seems to have little in common with the most recognizable classic version of the Spider-Man villain (though in more recent years he has apparently been fleshed out as something more like an anti-hero).
I did start to feel the weight of the film’s 2-hour runtime toward the end, but hypothetically, if this movie had come out in 1990 and been called Beastmaster 2000 or something like that, I think it would be well-loved as B-movie canon along with a lot of the other great pulp action stuff that came out around that time. Ultimately this movie is pretty entertaining. While not as successful Venom (which is hung on a superior concept), it’s certainly way better than I ever could have guessed when it was first announced.
If you watch one new movie this weekend, watch The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim.
But if you watch two, there’s definitely fun to be had with Kraven the Hunter.
A/V Out
