Jeff Callery

Yeesh….bit of a dogs breakfast. Could’ve been good, but it misses on all the marks. Too bad.

Meh…for all the great actors I was expecting a better movie. Pretty silly.

Review: “Kraven the Hunter” (2024) “Kraven the Hunter” is yet another misstep in Sony’s troubled attempts to expand its Spider-Man Universe without the web-slinger himself. What could have been an intense, gritty character study of one of Marvel’s most iconic antiheroes is instead a lazy, unfocused mess that feels like it was cobbled together by a studio more interested in setting up spinoffs than telling a coherent story. The first major issue is the film’s identity crisis. Is it a dark origin story? An action-packed thriller? A campy comic book romp? It tries to be all of these things and fails miserably. The tonal whiplash is so jarring that any emotional investment is dead on arrival. One moment, Kraven is lamenting the complexities of his relationship with nature; the next, he’s delivering cringe-inducing one-liners as CGI animals inexplicably assist in his bloodless carnage. Aaron Taylor-Johnson does his best to bring some gravitas to the role, but even his rugged charisma can’t save a script that feels like it was written by someone who skimmed Kraven’s Wikipedia page. The film sacrifices the character’s iconic traits—a master strategist, a brutal hunter obsessed with proving his superiority—for a watered-down eco-warrior persona that feels embarrassingly out of place. The villains are equally forgettable. Alessandro Nivola’s Rhino is reduced to a one-dimensional caricature, and the family drama subplot is riddled with clichés, dragging the story down further. Meanwhile, Russell Crowe hams it up with a bizarre accent as Kraven’s father, but even his scenery-chewing can’t elevate the lifeless dialogue. The action sequences, a potential saving grace, are shockingly mediocre. Over-reliance on CGI cheapens every fight, and the editing is so frenetic it’s often impossible to tell what’s happening. Worse, the violence feels neutered, robbing Kraven—a character defined by his brutal and primal nature—of any true menace or edge. And then there’s the glaring issue of Spider-Man’s absence. Kraven’s entire mythology is tied to his obsessive rivalry with the wall-crawler, yet the film stubbornly ignores this. Instead, it awkwardly shoehorns vague references to “a greater universe” in the hopes of keeping fans invested in Sony’s doomed cinematic ambitions. Even the pacing is a disaster. The first act drags with a plodding origin story, while the climax rushes through its conclusion as if the filmmakers realized they’d already overstayed their welcome. By the time the inevitable post-credits scene teases yet another ill-conceived spinoff, you’ll be too exhausted to care. Ultimately, Kraven the Hunter is a colossal waste of potential—a film that takes one of Marvel’s most compelling villains and reduces him to a bland, sanitized shell of his former self. It’s a sobering reminder that studios should focus on storytelling, not universe-building. Save yourself the disappointment and hunt for entertainment elsewhere. Rating: 1.5/5

Good show. Bad soundtrack…except the Bowie Track

Yikes…poor attempt. Waste of time.