Kraven the Hunter
review by Bobby Blakey
While Tom Holland’s iteration of Spider-Man is firmly planted in the MCU the characters is still owned by Sony. Outside of their original Spider-Man films they have been trying to get their own franchise going with the highly successful Spider-Verse films, Morbius, Madame Web and the recent third and final chapter of the Venom trilogy. Now they are bringing yet another villain to the forefront with Kraven The Hunter starring Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger, Alessandro Nivola, Christopher Abbott, Russell Crowe and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Kraven with A Most Violent Year director J.C. Chandor at the helm. Could this chapter of the non-Spider-Man spider verse deliver the ultimate hunt or will it become the prey?
Kraven the Hunter follows Kraven, a man whose complex relationship with his ruthless gangster father, Nikolai Kravinoff, starts him down a path of vengeance with brutal consequences, motivating him to become not only the greatest hunter in the world, but also one of its most feared.
The popular Spider-Man villain is one of the more unique in story line and this film seemed to keep the core intact, but with some varying changes. I love Kraven and hope this film would work on some level and the trailer looked pretty fun and violent. The film isn’t without its issues and sadly fails to really live up to the hype of the trailer and what it could have been, it still has some good stuff here and a film that I didn’t completely hate, but didn’t love either.
The opening of the film is a strong action piece that sets the tone and lets us meet Kraven in all his bad ass savagery before getting into his origins. The film does a good job with all the action and creative killings with plenty of blood flowing throughout. As an action film it works well but is muddled down with badly written dialogue and some pacing issues that bring it to a halt at times. Thankfully the action and performances from Taylor -Johnson and Crowe elevate the material to something worth enjoying despite the mess around them.
Aaron Taylor-John is perfectly cast here, bringing more depth to the role than the writing seems to give him. He looks the part and carries the action and menace to perfection making you eager to see him grow into the version fans know from the comics. Crowe brings the same to the role of his father as someone you cannot help but dislike throughout the film and no unneeded redemption. The rest of the cast are hit and miss with some strange choices of behaviors and personalities that don’t always make sense and are further lost with dialogue.
I was excited in the trailer to see the inclusion of one of my favorite villains The Rhino and forgetting the strange performance by Alessandro Nivola, was ok with the changes until we got to the final transformation. I know the comic look of Rhino might not translate great to live action so think this was a good way to go, but he looked so unbalanced in his form it comes off weird. Had they used the design with a Hulk sized body it might have been badass.
This also leads to a bigger issue which is the use of all the CGI animals. In a time where they can make movies like Mufasa or Revenant and have animals that look real why are we still getting ones that barely mesh with the live action? Throw in some real animals in there when you can and enhance them as more successful films have done. They play a big part in the film and never look well enough for you to get fully invested in their part in the tale. They aren’t horrible by any means and still impressive, but with what we are used to getting these days we have come to expect something more especially in a film like this.
I think the even bigger issue here is knowing that this is no doubt the final film in the Sony world of the Spider-man villain films, so everything developed and set up here just doesn’t matter. That is even more of a bummer since we don’t get the iconic Kraven look until the very end and they clearly set up more with another classic Spider-Man villain that will never come to pass.
I didn’t hate this film and like a lot of these films glad it exists since there was so long that we never would have gotten anything like but wish it had more to offer. It is miles better than Morbius and Madame Web, but another missed opportunity for what could have been.
Decide for yourself and check out Kraven the Hunter in theaters now from Sony.
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