Aaron-Taylor Johnson is a gruff, rugged badass as Kraven, in what may ultimately be the swan song for a sinking franchise. While Johnson gives off a cool bravado, the movie around him can’t quite match the effort. Based on one of Marvel’s greatest bad guys, the film centers on the powerful Kravinoff family, led by Russian drug kingpin Nikolai, portrayed by Russell Crowe in perhaps the best performance of the movie. Nikolai is, to put it mildly, a horrific parent and spouse. He condescendingly breaks the news to his two kids, Kraven and Dmitri (Fred Hechinger), that their mother has died, practically mocking her suicide. We’re meant to recognize immediately that Nikolai’s relationship to his kids is contentious and unhealthy, as he forces an extreme perspective of masculinity on to them that has no room for any of the love that actually defines a family.
In an attempt to break from Nikolai’s stranglehold, Kraven leaves home and becomes his own man. A hunter that targets some of the biggest crime bosses of the underworld. Naturally, though, this odyssey will lead him back into his father’s orbit.
Kraven feels stoic, violent, and loud. Its characters are pieced together with easy to read motivations and very obvious dialogue announcing those motivations. The film is sort of an examination into Kraven’s psyche as a man and as a killer, no doubt influenced by his father’s hand even as he seethes at the thought of his dad. We’re meant to receive this as a deeply personal story, a tragedy about 3 family members who have to juggle rage, regret, and paranoia. But all that world-building is housed in painfully mediocre execution, stretching the limit of our investment as neither the story nor the throwdowns live up to the attempted scale of this ‘epic’ family drama.
When Kraven receives his abilities, as a young witch breathes new life into his helpless body, it occurs in such an awkwardly shot manner, replete with subpar special effects. Afterward, Kraven is imbued with a litany of superhuman abilities consistent with the athletic prowess of the animal kingdom and can even communicate with them telepathically. He’s like ground level Aquaman. These are incredible powers on the page, but the limited VFX and production design of Kraven struggles to turn this premise into worthwhile spectacle.
The movie tries, by way of Buffalo stampedes and lion face-offs, but these creatures don’t have weight, and you don’t feel their presence. Meanwhile, mediocre coverage makes the action scenes inconsistent. For every cool stunt, there’s much more shoddy and tightly filmed choreography where the max-volume sound effects are supposed to cover for a lousy image, while certain shots are obfuscated to hide less than stellar CGI. Even the score itself is generic drivel that wouldn’t be out of place on a CBS procedural that you’ll forget about while you’re throwing popcorn buckets and cups away.
As for the story that holds this production together, it’s solidly plotted out even if it’s mostly uninspired. Much of this hinges on the Dmitri character, whom you can see why he gets to a certain mindset, even if you don’t agree with it. He’s essentially the Milo character from Morbius (2022), including starting with a close relationship to the protagonist before these pesky powers made everything complicated. Ultimately, his journey highlights Kraven’s inability to effectively communicate with him, although it’s unclear how much the movie itself is aware of this, or if it’s just a flaw of the screenplay. Kraven certainly had his opportunities!
It results in the movie having this weird middle ground, where the characters are technically fleshed out; we at least know their background and the things they believe. But not only is the inflection point hinging on a kidnapping and the betrayal behind that kidnapping that you can see coming from a mile away, but the realization that this transparent “twist” is merely what the movie needs to get the characters in the exact position at the end of the movie that you always expected them to be. And it does a disservice to the film’s setup, which puts a spotlight on complex family dynamics as well as the healthy and unhealthy uses of masculinity, but the characters are too 2-Dimensional to make those observations mean anything.
At times, you feel like you’re watching a re-run of Sony’s other lackluster attempts to turn a rogues gallery into a gallery of leading men and women. There’s the moment where the protagonist gets a costume more reminiscent of their comic book threads and the scene where another big name character finally reveals himself. They look cool in a vacuum, but lack impact when you consider the journey to get there is nothing to write home about. Its a frustrating experience where you see some good ingredients in the pot, but you do not like what the chef is doing with them.
However, this may all ultimately be for the best. The “Sony-verse” has been cooked for a minute, and I’ve consistently maintained that audiences will become disillusioned with these “Half-Blockbusters” where they’ll show you some of the things you recognize, but you’re not really getting a full-course movie. Sony needs to regroup and go back to the drawing board, and finally accept that audiences have higher standards than they’re giving them credit for and just won’t accept any lackluster offering just because it’s named after a character they know. When we’re sitting in a theater, we can’t do the work for you and entertain ourselves – that’s your job.
