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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nKraven\u2019s origin is that he and his brother Dmitri (Fred Hechinger) were brought up by their imposing Russian gangster father Nikolai (Russell Crowe), who was big on hunting metaphors. After their mother died under mysterious circumstances, Nikolai took the boys on a hunting trip, where Sergei was mauled by a lion. He nearly died, but aspiring voodoo priestess Calypso (eventually played by Ariana DeBose) gave him a magical potion that not only restored his health, but gave him the ability to communicate with animals. Now Kraven is a hunter like his father, but instead of animals, he hunts people. Sometimes this just means tracking people down to talk to them (like Calypso, who\u2019s now a lawyer), but usually it means killing bad guys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kraven spends most of the movie trying to protect Dmitri, whether it\u2019s from their father\u2019s control or from a rival gangster known as The Rhino (Alessandro Nivola). The Rhino employs an assassin called The Foreigner (Christopher Abbott), whose gimmick is that he can disappear while he counts to three, then pop out somewhere unexpected, usually to kill someone. The moment I met this character, I knew his downfall was going to come in a scene where he disappears for a two-count, then something \u201csurprising\u201d keeps him from reaching three. The movie could have done without the dull Foreigner, since it already has a pretty good surefire villain in The Rhino and a complicated villain in Nikolai.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For that matter, the protagonists aren\u2019t bad either. I can actually see Taylor-Johnson, Hechinger, DeBose, Nivola, and Crowe making an effort here. I can see Taylor-Johnson turning Kraven into a cool character under different circumstances. I got a few chuckles out of Nivola\u2019s scenery-chewing. But this isn\u2019t a movie that knows how to capitalize on the talent in its ranks. This is a movie that is here to slap together a few smoldering shots for publicity stills, a few action scenes for trailers, and call it a day. Taylor-Johnson is fine when he\u2019s giving a performance, but not when \u201cKraven\u201d is unconvincingly hopping around a supposed maximum-security prison. Nivola gives his character some engaging personality, but it\u2019s hard to notice when he\u2019s become an ugly (not terrifying, just ugly) CGI Rhino.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cKraven the Hunter\u201d is just another in a long line of Spider-Man-adjacent bombs. There\u2019s only one way I see these Sony also-rans having any kind of future: Disney needs to buy them for a song and bring them over for the crossover with the one character that can make them interesting. I\u2019m not talking about Spider-Man, I\u2019m talking about Deadpool! Don\u2019t laugh (or do, I don\u2019t care), he\u2019s helped the public regain interest in the likes of Elektra, Chris Evans\u2019 Human Torch, even himself after his awful 2009 debut. He\u2019s on a roll and I\u2019d love a movie that\u2019s 20% superhero adventure and 80% jokes at the expense of how badly these characters flopped in their own movies. And yes, this movie is a such a flop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grade: C-<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cKraven the Hunter\u201d is rated R for strong bloody violence, and language. Its running time is 127 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In between the blockbusters of the Thanksgiving season and the blockbusters of the Christmas season comes \u201cKraven the Hunter,\u201d a movie that was never going to be a blockbuster… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":60280,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60279"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60279"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60281,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60279\/revisions\/60281"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}