Someone should have told Kick-Ass that he didn’t need to be super to be a superhero; he just needed a kick-ass CGI team. (Well, that and a personal trainer; for some reason, unbelievable stunts are less unbelievable when you’re built like an MMA star.)
The strange career of Aaron Taylor-Johnson pivots from a nothing role in Bullet Train to a pure villain look in Fall Guy and half-a-year later, we can’t decide whether his vigilante, Kraven, is good or bad; we just know he kicks-ass.
Nikolai Kravinoff (Russell Crowe, in his best role in … a while) is a Russian gangster. As the film begins, his wife just committed suicide, maybe finally realizing she was married to Russell Crowe. Naturally, Nikolai pulls his teenage sons out of school and takes them hunting, like you do in these situations. The animals in this film are comically aggressive and one attacks elder son Sergei, who refuses to shoot the animal. Luckily, as Sergei is dying from lion wounds, a girl named Calypso, fresh off a tarot reading, gives him a secret voodoo healing potion. This, combined with lion blood, gives adult Sergei extraordinary speed, strength, and stamina.
Ok, fine, that sounded even sillier as I wrote it out. Film’s gotta have a plot, doesn’t it?
Years later, Sergei is now Aaron Taylor-Johnson, aka Kraven, the world’s greatest hunter. Calypso is now Ariana DeBose, a voodoo priestess and lawyer, just in case the priestessin’ doesn’t work out, I guess. Unfortunately, Russell Crowe is still Russell Crowe. Then Dmitri (Fred Hechinger) gets kidnapped and the greatest hunter in the world now has a personal stake in his “business.”
Somehow, that all sounded even sillier. Would it be better if you knew Dmitri was kidnapped while Kraven was staying at his apartment? So … you can hunt anybody down; you’ve got super cat strength, agility, scent, and hearing … and you missed the part where they stole your brother WHILE YOU WERE THERE!
Boy, as I write this, I am 100% realizing I enjoyed a bad film. It wasn’t Madame Web bad – and I didn’t en
joy that one – yet I am quite aware of the fact right now that Kraven the Hunter was not a good film.
Don’t let that distract you; the part where Kraven on foot in London tracks down the bulletproof vehicle that stole his brother is quite good. Even if unrealistic, this is what action scenes ought to be. Sure, catch a helicopter with a fishing net and then go waterskiing with it; that makes sense. Why not?
I’m not gonna pretend this was good. It wasn’t. But I’m also not going to pretend I didn’t enjoy it. I did. I got behind Kraven the Hunter and found myself truly enjoying a new Marvel character for the first time in ages. I was kinda done at Deadpool, but I could see myself enjoying more Kraven. Not a lot more, mind you, but maybe a little.
He’s a guy known well for misbehavin’
And the gangsters are universally ravin’
This premiere vigilante
Will make you look penny ante
Ideal if ultra vengeance you are Kraven
Rated R, 127 Minutes
Director: J.C. Chandor
Writer: Richard Wenk, Art Marcum, Matt Holloway
Genre: Everybody’s a villain
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Marvel fans
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: If you’ve grown tired of superhero films, this won’t help
