Russian crime lord Nikolai Kravinoff (Russell Crowe) always brought his two sons along on his big game hunting trips. In one such trip, the elder son Sergei was attacked by a lion and was left for dead. Unexpectedly, Calypso, a random girl on a safari trip with her parents, saw the mortally-wounded Sergei and gave him her grandmother's secret healing potion to drink. After being declared clinically dead for three minutes, Sergei came back to life.
16 years later, Sergei (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who had long been estranged from his family, was a deadly vigilante who sought out and executed game poachers and other notorious criminals with his beast-like strength, agility and invincibility. One day, his gentle, artistic younger brother Dmitri (Fred Hechinger) was abducted by henchmen of a powerful, thick-skinned hybrid human who called himself Rhino (Alessandro Nivola).
Kraven is another character from Marvel Comic, who was identified as Spider-Man adjacent, like Venom, Morbius, and Madame Web. The films of this Sony Pictures's Spider-Man Universe featuring these characters all had middling to bad reviews from critics. "Morbius" (2022) and "Madame Web" (2024) were box-office disasters. That did not stop foolhardy Sony from pushing through with this latest one about "Kraven the Hunter."
In the comics, Kraven the Hunter is a supervillain and adversary of Spider-Man since he was first introduced in 1964. In this movie, he considered himself a hunter with super-human abilities who went after criminals, especially those who endangered wild animals. Spider-Man was not even mentioned in this film, but spiders and subtle references to the friendly-neighborhood web-slingers did make cameo appearances, which fans would recognize.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson was solidly built and skilled in martial arts as a superhero was expected to be. Like Tom Hardy as Venom before him, Taylor-Johnson seemed in on the dark humor of his character and this movie. He came across as cool and likable, even if he did resort to some pretty vicious and violent kills (which gore fans would enjoy). If rumors are true that Taylor-Johnson is a top choice for James Bond, he certainly proved his mettle for action here.
As the father with whom Kraven had a conflicted relationship, Russell Crowe was believably cold and heartless. Christopher Abbott's mesmerizing villain Foreigner was very well-executed. However, the rest of the supporting actors were so campy that they're laughably bad (probably not on purpose). Worst offender was recent Oscar winner Ariana de Bose, whose portrayal of the adult Calypso was just so flat and out of whack. 6/10
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