Directed By J.C Chandor

Starring – Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Russell Crowe, Christopher Abbott

The Plot – Kraven’s (Taylor-Johnson) complex relationship with his ruthless father, Nikolai Kravinoff (Crowe), starts him down a path of vengeance with brutal consequences, motivating him to become not only the greatest hunter in the world, but also one of its most feared.

Rated R for strong bloody violence, and adult language

KRAVEN THE HUNTER – Official Red Band Trailer (HD)

POSITIVES

Grasping at straws has never been more evident than with ‘Kraven the Hunter’, but even despite its abundance of flaws there were a couple of benefits to the execution that I applauded immensely, especially for how they stand out in a movie that is constantly counteracting against them. For starters, Aaron Taylor-Johnson is a more than capable Kraven, particularly in the defined balance of heart and ferocity that he supplants to the internal character struggle that is equal parts human and animal. Johnson receives very little chances to exude the kind of cunning charisma and charms that have previously enhanced his capabilities as two other superhero characters, but his resiliency for physicality here is continuously on full display, and with the appeal of his committed physique standing out against his opposition, Taylor-Johnson does everything that he can to make the movie a success, even if the part surrounding him are far inferior. In addition to a dazzling lead performance, the decision to make this R-rated is met with much appreciation from this moviegoer, especially in the depths of viscerally gruesome kill sequences that underline the animalistic urges of Kraven’s onslaught. While the intentions themselves are marred by C.G heavy blood of the most obviously artificial deposits, there’s finally permanence to these supernatural characters that have been missing remarkably throughout the sixteen years of this big boom in superhero cinema, especially those properties like ‘Venom’ and ‘Morbius’, which would’ve been aided tremendously by eliciting the extensive dangerousness of the characters who they often overlooked.

NEGATIVES

There are a lot of things that can go wrong in a superhero film, and all of them seem to be present in ‘Kraven the Hunter’, a movie that took an extra fourteen months of post-production to perfect things, and yet still has an argument for being Sony’s weakest of the Spider-less universe that is has crafted for itself. Beginning with the script written by three respective writers, and feeling like such, it seems this trio and the studio have accepted that Kraven had little chance to become an extensive franchise, and as a result they have shoehorned three movies of adversaries and arcs into a single movie, and one that barely feels cohesive enough, despite no rides of ascending momentum that could’ve made the two hour run time all the more seamless. It begins with an overlong first act that makes us wait impatiently for the Taylor-Johnson section of Kraven’s involvement, full of nothing exposition that ultimately and unfortunately goes nowhere, all the while unloading as many comic-familiar characters to the predicament, without so much as a single ounce of familiarity between them. From there, the second act plods the pacing even more grindingly, with some of the most laughably written dialogue and deliveries that might have even topped ‘Madame Web’s’ horrendous line about Casey describing her deceased mother’s in-depth reason for traveling to the Amazon. The line this time around involves Ariana Debose’s Calypso talking about her magical grandmother, in which she asserts “She died after that, and I never saw her again”, as if that last part needs articulating. Finally, the third act drowns on long past its climax for as many as three different endings, and while it’s obviously to sew up any loose ends with a franchise whose secondary installment will never see the light of day, it makes a C.G-heavy climax involving Kraven and Rhino to feel all the more superfluous, especially for how this movie somehow finds the strength and audacity to humiliate the Rhino far more than Paul Giammatti’s version did during ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ duo of movies. Speaking of C.G, this movie is so enveloped by artificiality that it’s difficult to take anything that we’re experiencing at face level, especially tussles with beastly creatures and overpowering motions of the supernatural beings, which don’t come close to attaining any kind of gravitational influence that we experience on this planet. The animals themselves are so laughably rendered that their motions and textures would stand out distractingly in something dropped in the year 2001, but made so much worse in a picture with a ballooned and difficult to believe 110 million dollar budget, which it will never even come close to earning back. The presentation looks atrocious, between as many as four different color grades between geographic settings, with my favorite easily being the mystic desaturation of turquoise, which I’m guessing someone recently watched ‘Twilight’ to accurately attain. This is all the more evident when Kraven’s animalistic transformation during the scene, in which his eyes are focused on to satisfy the Jacob lover in all of us. More technical incoherence follows over the post-filming audio deposits, which might not quite reach the same level of dependency as the aforementioned ‘Madame Web’, but do stand out like a quarter pounder with cheese at a vegan picnic, all thanks to elevated volume levels that make certain characters sound like they’re shouting, when others are merely whispering. Then there’s the editing, which in summary are some of the worst cuts and transitions that I have seen this year, but in digging deeper deserve so much studying, for how any big name studio felt that this finished product was good enough to present to a paying audience. Sometimes it amounts to important scenes involving exposition being abruptly cut, while others completely rid any semblance of suspense and tension to the movie’s action set pieces, which are fun enough in concept, but vertigo-inducing upon the execution of alienating angles stitched together that make it difficult to coherently read just what is happening in the confines of scenes where we can merely only make out shapes, and not necessarily characters or their actions. But perhaps the single biggest tragedy to ‘Kraven the Hunter’ is its monumental dropping the ball of one of the most collectively talented ensembles that I have seen this year, to which I place blame entirely on the direction of Chandor, for not knowing tonally the kind of movie that he was executing in consistency. Despite being graced by Oscar winners like Russell Crowe or Ariana DeBose, their portrayals stand out in the most laughably humiliating way that threatens their appeal for future castings, with Crowe donning a Russian accent that makes me question Dracula’s country of origin, and DeBose’s eyes continuously focusing off screen, to what I can only assume is the cue cards of the movie’s dialogue. I say this because during a scene involving a funeral proceeding, she speaks aloud to the people while moving her eyes repeatedly from right to left. I can professionally and constructively assess that Crowe and DeBose are bad, but they pale in comparison to Alessandro Nivola, who feels plucked from an entirely different movie. I can give Nivola credit for hamming it up and gleefully chewing the scenery of every moment that his character is a part of, however it builds to such distracting heights that I couldn’t help but laugh every time his character interacted with someone, and though it did momentarily cure my overwhelming boredom for the picture, which was growing increasingly difficult to remain invested, it’s a further kick to the balls of the portrayal of the Rhino character, which I truly feel will never recover towards gracing another movie, Disney made or not, ever again. Finally, a personal problem with these movies continues, as Kraven never comes close to feeling like the super villain that he is in his comics of origin. There’s no shred of a moral dilemma or momentary irresponsibility for the character. Instead, this feels like every superhero origin story that you’ve ever experienced, where the gifted save the weak, and as a result can’t be considered a legitimate Kraven movie if Sony still balks at the idea of testing their audiences for a second with character portrayals that are edgy or unremorseful.

OVERALL
‘Kraven the Hunter’ takes aim at saving Sony’s murky relationship with Marvel properties, but instead digs itself a deeper hole that, to audience benefit, might finally be too deep for them to climb out of. Between student film levels of production values, laughably distracting performances from a highly talented ensemble, and coma-bordering levels of boredom within a flatly floundering script, this kind of bad legitimately takes effort to attain, and while Sony is undeniably responsible for the obvious shape-shifts to this story that took place over the two years of production, nobody involved is innocent for summoning the cherry on a shit covered sundae that involved ‘Madame Web’, ‘Venom: The Last Dance’, and this to its yearly deliveries.

My Grade: 2/10 or F-