Kraven the Hunter Review

Filled with enough family upheaval to stuff a John Osborne play and a stellar action turn from star Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Kraven the Hunter is too beholden to its superhero roots – and too afraid to push its familial drama as far as possible – to get the most out of its disparate pieces.

The choice to make films about Spider-Man villains without the man himself has been fraught and unproductive so far (no amount of box office will give the Venom films a soul) as filmmaker after filmmaker has searched for something to fill that web-shaped hole. Director J.C. Chandor (Margin Call, All Is Lost), no stranger to character drama, has looked inward to one of Spider-Man’s oldest C-list foes to ask what would a man named Sergei Kravinoff, who dresses in a lion skin suit to hunt dangerous animals, be in this modern world?

The logical answer is a scion of Russian oligarchs and crime bosses. In this case, that means a cold and violent beast of man, Nikolai (Russell Crowe) who prizes strength even when it comes to his family and is not afraid to pound the lesson to his two sons (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Fred Hechinger) even if it means alienating them forever.

After being mauled by a lion during one of these lessons Sergei, leaves for good, abandoning Nikolai’s worldview and allowing his brother to take the full brunt of their father’s teachings.

It’s a potentially heady mixture of relationship melodrama, particularly when Kraven starts hunting down men like his father and removing them from society, trying to purge the specters of his father from himself and the world around him. It’s a solid base to propel Aaron Taylor-Johnson from allowing him to focus on action-hero performance that speaks to his best skills: a mixture of glowering petulance and sardonic delivery.

Richard Wenk’s (The Equalizer) screenplay focuses on exactly the sort of slow-build action set pieces and cool competence from its protagonist that would be expected and both work with Taylor-Johnson’s cinema poise.

Chandor backs that up with compelling action beats far superior to the strange, dull Triple Frontier, moving both his star and camera in a gliding, elegant, and animal-like fashion that pushes at the edge of fantasy without entirely breaking reality. It builds the film around Kraven, visually and thematically, rather than foisting him into some more generic action fable.

Make no mistake, it’s not attempting to do Chekov; Wenk and co-screenwriters Art Marcum and Matt Holloway unleash every Russian mafia thriller cliché they can for Kraven to fight through. In between the helpings of interfamilial drama, Wenk et al. staffed the film with various gangsters and underworld types to be alternately rude to and dispatched by Kraven in the style of the vendetta film.

On its own at that level, it’s as entertaining as any of its modern ilk (minus the presence of a Denzel Washington but still), but the Marvel connection does mean more characters and more backstory has to be ladled in to appease the greater superhero audience, including a super assassin (Christopher Abbott) of mesmerizing abilities who takes up more time than interest considering some much of the personal drama lies elsewhere. Kraven does have a history, of course, and it must be nodded at even if most filmgoers probably wouldn’t know if it were missing.

“Nodded at” is about all that Kraven does, which also requires the film to stop for moments to explain who someone is and frequently without motivations for their presence or actions. Why does a young Calypso (Ariana DeBose) save a young Kraven from life-threatening wounds? Because she must, because she always did. It all slows down a more fun and potentially more interesting action thriller.

Chandor’s direction and Taylor-Johnson’s confident performance mostly overcome that, at least until the suitably overstuffed finale, when a scenery-chewing Alessandro Nivola gets to break loose as he attempts to take over Nikolai’s crime empire. Did it have to be there? We may never know.

There is a solid action thriller buried within Kraven the Hunter‘s heart — it’s easily the best of the Sony non-Spider-Man films so far (it’s a low bar) — and with a little more restraint it could have brought out. The bones are strong enough, and carried well enough by its star, to show what was possible, but they also make clear what was lost in the process.

KRAVEN THE HUNTER REVIEW RATING: 7 OUT OF 10

Sony Pictures will release Kraven the Hunter in theaters on December 13, 2024. The film has been rated R for strong bloody violence, and language.