“Kraven the Hunter”
R/Superhero/Action/127 Mins
Directed by: J. C. Chandor
Written by: Richard Wenk, Art Marcum & Matt Holloway
Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson (“The Fall Guy”), Ariana DeBose (“Wish”), Fred Hechinger (“Gladiator II”), Alessandro Nivola (“The Brutalist”), Christopher Abbott (“Possessor”), Russell Crowe (“The Pope’s Exorcist”)
Review: On Tuesday, Sony Pictures released the best thing you’ll see Aaron-Taylor Johnson star in this week: the TRAILER for the long awaited threequel “28 Years Later.” Also, coming soon is the Holiday season release of the best FILM you’ll see this year that ATJ stars in…Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu.”
In other words, “Kraven the Hunter” isn’t Taylor-Johnson’s finest hour, well more like, his darkest 2 hours…
“Kraven the Hunter” is the latest release in “Sony’s Spider-Man Universe” once again not featuring the titular web-crawler in ANY capacity. This entry centers on a hunter named Kraven who “hunts people” (he emphasizes that like 5-6 times throughout), and is trying to save his brother from a mafia gang led by the “Rhino.” Along the way he’s accompanied by Calypso, a lawyer who saved his life as a teenager and they are both being pursued by a mercenary called “The Foreigner” who has the power to do: something that is never explained.
This is essentially the plot of the movie, I gotta be honest, it’s already leaving my memory and I finished it 45 minutes ago (at the time of writing). Most of the sequences are so dull and lifeless, the film is just limping along from scene to scene. On top of that you have a film that seems to have been so maligned by reshoots. It’s like a Frankenstein monster of a film that is haphazardly edited together, it’s barely cohesive. It also joins its fellow franchise film, “Madame Web” in having A LOT of its dialogue changed through ADR dubbing. Expect some words being spoken and no mouths moving. It’s also very telling when a scene was a reshoot due to the obviously bad green screen environment behind the actors.
So many changes are assumed to have been made, it made the visual effects suffer. I don’t blame the VFX artists at all, when you’re given little time and a lot to fix, it does make the CGI results come out not very refined and poor. Most of the animals looked like they stepped out of a video game and the “Rhino” (for the sheer five minutes of screen time he’s given), looks like an abomination. Let’s just say I’d rather watch Paul Giamatti in a mechanical rhino suit.
Unfortunately, the best aspects of this film were tainted by a bad script. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Fred Hechinger and Christopher Abbott did decent jobs with their performances. Out of every 4 scenes, 2 of those scenes had good performances buried in there. The brotherly bond between Kraven and Dimitri (Hechinger) is the most interesting theme and I found their chemistry to be good and believable. Abbott is one of my favorite actors working today so it pained me to see him say one cool line and then say “1, 2, 3” in a echoing voice and then move fast? Or is he phasing? It’s not clear. You could also tell he had more material to work with that was cut. It’s primarily evident in a sequence where he takes out guards and then says one line and it hard cuts to another scene. I wanted more of that fast-phasing-teleporting guy! Another high point are the violent action sequences. These were the moments that caught my eye in the trailers, but like a trailer, most of the action is short and quick. However, these are the times when you sit up in your seat only to slouch back when it goes back to being a slog.
MILD SPOILERS AHEAD:
I heard a rumor yesterday that Sony was possibly planning on ending the SSMU franchise so this might be the last film in this series. So it makes it all the funnier when there is sequel bait showered throughout this movie with most likely zero pay off. Guess we’ll never see more of Calypso and her mysterious liquid that gives you powers (she disappears at the end btw) or what happens when Dimitri gains the ability of a chameleon?! All leading up to the reveal of Kraven looking in a mirror suited up in a comic accurate costume that is probably the last time he’ll ever wear it. Like the other films in this universe, this film is just a treasure trove of broken promises and false starts. At least Spider-Man is safe hiding in the MCU…
Score: 2.5/10
”Kraven the Hunter” is out now in theaters everywhere.
