'Kraven the Hunter' Review

After three Venom movies that made us ask “Are they supposed to be bad?” and the likes of Morbius and Madame Web that had us saying “Wow, this is embarrassing,” Kraven the Hunter is here to shut us all up. True to what it set out to do, nary a word was spoken during the 127 minutes that Sony’s latest adventure to circumvent their contractual restrictions with Marvel glistened upon the silver screen, all of that precious light dissipating as it bounced back to our collective eyeballs. Even if it was for all the wrong reasons, I remember so much about Morbius and Madame Web. That’s because all publicity is good publicity, and Kraven the Hunter has nothing to offer.

The one thing Kraven wore so proudly during its years-long marketing campaign was its R-rating for bloody and gruesome violence, something that all the other Marvel superhero films have shied away from. But all that air was let out of the balloon once the film was repeatedly kicked all the way down from its original January 2023 release, eventually being beaten to the punch by Deadpool & Wolverine. But even if the stars aligned for Kraven to keep its original release date, the overediting and bland stuntwork so closely fit the PG-13 mold that it wouldn’t have made a difference.

The hacking of celluloid never ceases throughout the entirety of the runtime, with several scenes featuring throwaway lines of dialogue referring to events that never happened. The magic of ADR comes to the rescue on a few occasions, with poor Christopher Abbott having several scenes where we never see his lips move throughout a full conversation. He plays The Foreigner, a character whose importance and motivation are still a mystery to me, as are his weird powers where he counts down from three and places people in a hypnotic trance.

Kraven’s powers are a little more straightforward, his animalistic super strength and agility originating from the blood of a lion mixing with his own (PSA: You will not gain feline or canine superpowers if you attempt this at home). The blending of those two fluids came after Kraven’s father (Russell Crowe) took him and his brother Dmitri on an African hunting expedition to mold them into tough men. Kraven at least got the long end of the stick with his washboard abs, the flowing hair of Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and feet with the same durability and traction as the tires on a Formula One car. Dmitri had to settle with becoming scrawny Fred Hechinger, perpetually caught in a cycle of self-doubt and violence.

With his powers, Kraven hunts the hunters, specifically those who poach in his nondescript sanctuary in Siberia. While INTERPOL seems to have no problem with the bodies piling up and the press in a frenzy over who this mysterious hunter is, someone like Aleksei Sytsevich aka 'The Rhino' (Alessandro Nivola, nearly reprising his character from Face/Off) doesn’t like seeing another apex predator. Between Kraven’s constant flexing and Rhino’s severe case of Greyscale, every muscle is intensely clenched.

Director J.C. Chandor is a good filmmaker, proving himself as both a writer/director on personal projects (Margin Call, A Most Violent Year) and as a hired hand on studio features (Triple Frontier). The years he’s spent on this project will be seen as a waste of talent and opportunities, a sentiment that can be extended to the entire concept of Sony's Spider-Man Universe. A solar system without a sun just results in every planet suffering a cold, painful death.