Kraven the Hunter

I came into this movie hoping that it would be so bad that it would be good. It wasn’t at all, Kraven the Hunter’s biggest sin is that it is convulted and boring.

The plot has something to do with The Rhino (Alessandro Nivola) and The Foreigner (Christopher Abbott) trying to kill Kraven the Hunter (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). Kraven is part of the Kravinoff family, led by an abusive power-hungry father, Nikolai Kravinoff (Russell Crowe) and a weak brother, Dmitri Kravinoff (Fred Hechinger). There are side plots where some people are trying to take over the Kravinoff business. And there’s a witch lawyer that helps out Kraven, Calypso Ezili (Ariana DeBose). It’s all quite messy.

There is a lot of exposition and not good exposition. People spouting on and on about things that could be shown instead of spoken. On top of this exposition is a layer of cheese – especially with the mystical stuff.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson is fine as the title character. Russell Crowe growls through most of the movie with little impact. Alessandro Nivola Is a bit over the top and not in a good way. The hissing scene, what was that? That was just weird, but maybe not as weird as The Rhino looks. I’m not really sure what Ariana DeBose was doing in this movie, she even gets a superhero suit out of the blue that didn’t make any sense. Christopher Abbott didn’t get much to do as The Foreigner outside of counting 1, 2, 3.

The movie opens with Basil Poledouris’ Hymn to Red October – the same track that originally opens the movie The Hunt for Red October. It almost feels like the movie was rushed and they couldn’t get music composed in time to replace the temp track that was used during editing. The rest of the score for the movie was mediocre and not memorable.

The action in the movie was unremarkable with an overuse of computer generated characters during fight scenes which took away from the thrill of the action. The chase scene through London and then over water was well done though – complete with a Captain America vs helicopter moment.

This movie gave it a good try, but missed the mark.

Streamed on Netflix.