KRAVEN THE HUNTER : Tuesday 17th December 2024

I saw the MA15+ Rated 'KRAVEN THE HUNTER' earlier this week, and this American Superhero film features the Marvel Comics characters of the same name and is the sixth film in Sony's Spider-Man Universe. It is Directed by J.C. Chandor who made his feature film making debut with 'Margin Call' in 2011 and would follow this up with 'All Is Lost' in 2013, 'A Most Violent Year' in 2014, and 'Triple Frontier' in 2019. The film was released here in Australia and the US last week, cost a reported circa US$120M to produce, has so far grossed US$29M worldwide and has garnered generally negative critical reviews. Apparently, earlier this month and following the projected financial failure of the film, it was reported that 'Kraven the Hunter' would be the final film in Sony's Spider-Man Universe, ending any chance for a sequel or crossover film, although one well known publication stated that this will not be the last film in the franchise . . . . . so who do you believe?

The film opens up with a convoy of prison vehicles driving along a snow covered landscape deep inside Siberia. The convoy comes to halt at a fuel stop so that the prisoners can relieve themselves before continuing their onward journey. One of the prisoners is Sergei Kravinoff aka Kraven (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) who is assigned a cell with a mean looking MoFo of a man. Kravinoff tells his fellow inmate to give him just three days before he escapes. The next day Kraven is brought to the attention of Seymon Chorney (Yuri Kolokolnikov) a Russian crime lord and fellow inmate, after he successfully overpowers two of Chorney's henchmen in the exercise yard. Chorney asks Kraven who he is, to which comes the reply that he is the Hunter, with Chorney responding that it's just a myth. Within a minute Chorney and his two henchmen are dead, stabbed with the tooth of a lion which Kraven plucked from a lion skin rug on the floor. Kraven then makes his escape through the prison effortlessly clambering up walls, running along roof tops, jumping barbed wire fences, and evading a hail of bullets from the prison guards. Once outside he runs into a snow storm in which is waiting an aircraft to transport him back home. 

We then back track sixteen years, and following the death of his mother, Sergei Kravinoff (Levi Miller), along with his half-brother Dmitri Smerdyakov (Billy Barratt), are taken out of school by their father Nikolai (Russell Crowe) to prepare to take over his drug trafficking operations. During a hunting trip in Tanzania, Sergei is mortally wounded protecting his brother from a legendary apex lion. Almost dead from the savage mauling, he is found by a girl named Calypso (Diaana Babnicova), who, having been forewarned by her grandmother that she would intervene in an accident very soon and give its victim great power, heals him with a serum gifted by her grandmother, and calls for rescue, leaving a tarot card in the hands of an unconscious Sergei. A few days later Sergei comes around in a hospital bed having been officially pronounced dead for three minutes, but now appears to be fighting fit. Nikolai discharges his son from hospital and the three return to their grand home on the outskirts of London. Nikolai reveals he killed the lion to teach his sons a lesson about showing no fear, and in his world it is very much survival of the fittest. Sergei, meanwhile having discovered his physical attributes have become animal like, becomes sickened by his father's actions and his intentions for his sons, and retreats to a sanctuary his mother owned in the remote wilderness of eastern Russia, leaving Dmitri behind to fend for himself.

Fast forwarding to the present day and Kraven travels to London for Dmitri's (Fred Hechinger) birthday, which he does every year. Unable to sleep that night on the sofa of Dmitri's lavish apartment, he goes for a walk falling asleep in the park outside Dmitri's building. He wakens the next day and goes back up to the apartment to find Dmitri gone and blood stains on his pillow and bed sheets. Dmitri had been captured by mercenaries, and when Nikolai refuses to pay the US$20M ransom, Kraven tracks down Calypso (Ariana DeBose), now working as an investigative lawyer in London, and convinces her to help track down his brother's kidnappers. 

Meanwhile, Dmitri is met by his kidnappers' boss Aleksei Sytsevich (Alessandro Nivola) who took part in an experiment spearheaded by a cutting edge New York doctor, granting him the strength and outward appearance of a rhinoceros which he is able to control by way of a back pack containing a serum which continually drip feeds via a tube into his lower side. When he unplugs the tube, he turns into Rhino but says the process is extremely painful. Aleksei proposes an alliance to overthrow Nikolai, but upon discovering Kraven's connection to Dmitri, Aleksei lures him to an abandoned monastery in Turkey, with the intention of taking out Kraven there, but he survives the ambush. 

Aleksei is then approached by the Foreigner (Christopher Abbott), an assassin who uses ocular hypnosis to disorientate his targets, with an offer to kill Kraven, having carefully studied his modus operandi for years. Tracking Kraven and Calypso to his sanctuary in eastern Russia and using Dmitri as bait, Aleksei and the Foreigner ambush Kraven. Drugging him with neurotoxin, the Foreigner attacks Kraven and is successful in overpowering and paralysing him but just as he is standing over Kraven and about to pull the trigger of the gun pointed at his head Calypso kills him with an arrow straight in to his eye, and revives Kraven with a vile of the serum. Kraven then uses a buffalo stampede to trap Aleksei, who, despite turning into the Rhino and briefly overpowering him, is killed. 

Having determined that Nikolai was the one who revealed his existence to Aleksei, Kraven tracks his father down to a snow covered Siberian forest for answers. There in the dead of night Nikolai states that he knew Aleksei was targeting him and manipulated his sons to remove him. Kraven refuses to kill his father and turns his back on him and as he walks away he drops the ammunition he unloaded from his fathers shotgun on the ground just as Nikolai is attacked and killed by a bear. 

One year later on the occasion of Dmitri's birthday, Kraven again visits his brother in London. Dmitri in the meantime has gained shapeshifting abilities from the doctor who experimented on Aleksei, and after discovering this new found ability disowns Kraven, stating that despite his claims of being morally superior, he and Nikolai were the same - big game hunters searching for their next big trophy. Dmitri demonstrates this to Kraven by changing his appearance before becoming chameleon like and then changing back to his natural appearance. 

At his family home, Kraven comes across a note left for him by Nikolai along with a vest made from the skin and the mane of the killed lion that mauled Sergei when he was young, which he puts on, and takes a seat in front of a mirror.

'Kraven the Hunter' is not a bad film, but it's also not that good either. The plot is fairly thin on the ground, the action set pieces are well enough choreographed, but the CGI is left wanting and sub-par for a film costing well north of US$100M, and, nothing that we haven't already seen before. The dialogue is also pretty lame, and the only saving grace is in the performances of Taylor-Johnson, Crowe, Nivola and DeBose, with the latter being given too little screen time and too little to contribute. J.C. Chandor whose previous film output has been far far better, has crafted a film that seems to have had too much studio and Producer interference, resulting in a film that is sure to disappear into the annals of mediocrity and leaving Sony's Spider-Man Universe to bow out on a whimper.

'Kraven the Hunter' merits two claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps.