Kraven The Hunter

For the comic-book-illiterate, Kraven The Hunter, created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in 1964, is a Spider-Man antagonist and co-founder of the supervillain gang the Sinister Six (rumour has it they were known as the Foreboding Five before Vulture joined). J.C. Chandor’s mostly flat and ludicrous origin story reimagines him as a vigilante Doctor Dolittle, an apex predator who can not only commune with animals but also takes on some of their abilities, such as increased smell, vision and strength. Surprisingly, this is perhaps the part of Kraven The Hunter that makes the most sense.

The backstory is leadenly sketched. Taken on safari by his Russian crime-boss father Nikolai (Russell Crowe) to get over the death of his mother (as you do), Sergei Kravinoff (Levi Miller) is ravaged by a lion but revived by a potion administered by Calypso Ezili, the granddaughter of a voodoo high priestess, which gives him hallucinations that look like outtakes from a Terrence Malick film. More importantly, it also imbues him with a preternatural ability to stalk prey. Sergei grows up (hello, Aaron Taylor-Johnson), goes to live with the animals in a forest and makes an inventory of bad guys he starts to bump off.

Kraven’s to-do-in list brings him into contact with a grown-up Calypso (Ariana DeBose, looking lost), now an investigative lawyer, his estranged Fredo-a-like brother (Fred Hechinger) and an assassin called The Foreigner (Christopher Abbott), another pre-existing Spidey baddie whose super-power involves counting to three and hypnotising his enemies. Pulling the strings to take over Nikolai’s evil empire is mercenary Aleksei Sytsevich (Alessandro Nivola), who can take on the skin of a rhino, something even thicker than Nivola’s Russian accent.

Chandor has played in some of these sandboxes before — the battles against nature (All Is Lost), the dynamics of crime families (A Most Violent Year), a study of characters who do bad things for good reasons (Triple Frontier) — but here he has lost his touch. The storytelling is ham-fisted, lame-brained and doesn’t really know how to lean into the fun of it all. Although the action does have a pleasingly brutal quality that most comic-book flicks don’t have, while there’s the odd smart action lick (a car chase through London, an assault on a monastery) and moments of intentional comedy to go with the unintentional ones.

Taylor-Johnson looks the part and displays athletic chops, but can’t do much with A4-thin writing. Perhaps having the best time is Crowe as a patriarchal crime lord with a nifty line in neckerchiefs, endlessly wanging on about fear and refusing to trust anyone who doesn’t like Tony Bennett. Unfortunately for all concerned, Chandor’s film feels unlikely to establish an ongoing franchise and this hunter may well need a new line of work. ‘Kraven The Chartered Accountant’, maybe? Or perhaps ‘Kraven The Influencer’? Those guns would look great on the ’gram.