By the time I made it to the theaters on Sunday to see Kraven the Hunter, which had just been released on Friday, the rumors had already started.
“It’s worse than Morbius.”
“Worst superhero movie since Madam Web.”
So I was fully prepared for a mess of a movie, with bad CGI and even worse acting. But that’s not what I found. Kraven isn’t going to win any awards, but it’s an enjoyable, violent superhero movie worth the price of admission.
The plot of Kraven is straightforward. Sergei Kravinoff (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson) gets his magical powers from a magical elixir he receives after a hunting accident in Africa. He’s given the elixir by a young girl named Calypso (Ariana DeBose). He leaves his crime kingpin father, Nikolai Kravinoff (played by Russel Crowe, see below) and his sensitive brother Dmitri (Fred Hechinger) behind to explore his new feral nature. Years later, Sergei is now Kraven, a man who hunts drug lords and poachers across the world. He teams up with an older Calypso to take down Aleksei Sytsevich (Alessandro Nivola), also known as the Rhino.
Kraven doesn’t bring anything particularly new or innovative to the comic book movie space. Even its biggest novelty, the surprising amount of gore and gruesome deaths, have been done already by Deadpool. But you don’t have to reinvent the wheel to ride on one. Kraven offers some fun set pieces, most notably a chase through London that ends in a helicopter standoff that’s one part Captain America: Civil War and one part 22 Jump Street, minus the jokes.
The most fun part of Kraven though is Russel Crowe, who is clearly having a blast putting on a thick Russian accent and playing the heavy as Kraven’s father. Scenery-chewing gets a bad rap, but when an actor as gifted as Crowe is enjoying their chance to eschew nuance and subtext and let it all hang out on the screen, it really is fun to watch.
Beyond the theatrics of Nikolai, there’s actually a compelling family drama. The strained relationship between Kraven, Dmitri and Nikolai undergirds the plot of the film, and actually gives the film some depth as the family bumps into each other again and again. It’s fascinating to watch as the sons who swore to never become their father slowly turn into him over the course of the film, and it sets up a potentially explosive confrontation in a future sequel, should one ever get made.
So then, why does everyone say this movie sucks? I’m not entirely sure, but it feels like there’s been an almost concerted effort to undermine any superhero movie that doesn’t come straight from Marvel Studios. Sony in particular has suffered at the hands of what can only be called Marvel Studios Bias. I thought Madam Web was perfectly fine as a movie, and the Venom trilogy has been quite enjoyable. But Sony’s movies aren’t judged for what they are, but instead what they aren’t, and that’s a Marvel Studios production. So the headlines scream about low box office numbers and terrible performances, but I just didn’t see it from what I watched.
Kraven the Hunter is a fun movie if you go in with the right expectations. I don’t mean you need to lower them, you just need to ignore all of the blatant hate and let the movie stand, or fall if that’s what happens, on its own merits. You may be pleasantly surprised if you do.
