A colossally charmless superhero movie, Kraven the Hunter got pummelled by the critics and didn’t do well at the box office. But never mind all that, who should we blame?
Partly an origin story, it heavily features Aaron Taylor-Johnson in the lead role, though Levi Miller plays the youthful Kraven, the Russian oligarch’s son who is mauled by a lion and acquires some of its powers after a drop of its blood mingles with his own. Or was it the spooky vial of something administered to the near-dead Sergei (aka Kraven) by Calypso Ezili (Dianna Babnicova when young, Ariana DeBose when older)? You see, even there, in the birth event of this superhero, the “Peter Parker and his radioactive spider” moment, the story can’t quite make its mind up. Is it the lion blood or the liquid in the vial? There may be a reason why Kraven often popped up in other superheroes’ comicbook adventures and was less successful anchoring his own.
Anyway, from here a largely formless story eventually resolves into being all about Kraven and his rescue of his kidnapped brother, who has been seized by bad guy Ömer Ozdemir (Murat Seven), or is it Aleksei Sytsevich aka the Rhino (Alessandro Nivola), or possibly a mysterious gent with hypnotic powers called The Foreigner (Christopher Abbott)? Again the indecision.
A case of too many villains and not enough plot. Plus the repeated return to the movie’s “theme” – masculinity and its discontents, exemplified by boorish oligarch Nikolai Kravinoff, played by Russell Crowe. Kravinoff is a big game hunter determined his sons should grow up to be a toughie like him who shakes his head remorsefully every time they show compassion or interest in anything not related to violence.
Taylor-Johnson’s performance is dead behind the eyes, which is doubly a problem because Levi Miller, as the young Kraven, does pretty well as the young Kraven – movie-star looks, a bit of charisma. Taylor-Johnson has the gym-toned abs and parkour skills but they don’t compensate for his lack of energy.
Bizarrely, this is a JC Chandor movie, in as much as any movie with Marvel branding can be said to be a director’s movie. Not sure what’s going on there, but Chandor’s debut was the superb Margin Call, which he followed up with the brilliant All Is Lost, before changing down a gear to A Most Violent Year, then Triple Frontier, and now this. He’s getting less distinctive and more generic with every film, though there is also the sense that he’s fighting an uphill battle trying to do something with committee-written material, attempting a human drama with a superhero in it rather than a superhero movie. If that is the case, then he’s fallen badly down the cracks.
The upshot is that the film comes across as if it wants to be dull. It’s also let down by its own computer-graphics. At every key CG moment, they are simply not up to snuff. That said, the blood and gore is pretty good in this movie, and Kraven’s approach to fighting is novel – he bites one guy’s eyebrow off in an early scene, something I’ve not seen before. “Gratifyingly bloody”, I put in my notes, though by this point I was scrabbling about trying to find positives.
Who to blame? I suspect it goes all the way to the top. ATJ is miscast, Ariana DeBose (who won an Oscar for West Side Story) underused. Of the villains, Christopher Abbott cuts through most with least to do – you’ve got it or you haven’t – and Levi Miller is impressive while the story is with him. But most of all it’s the weak, whimpering and self-pitying tone of the whole thing – poor under-appreciated masculine men, boo hoo – that’s its problem. For god’s sake, guys, grow a pair.
Kraven the Hunter – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
