Oh, Marvel, what nonsense can’t you spin? Meet Sergei Kravinoff (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), whose father, Nikolai (Russell Crowe), is a Russian gangster. Sergei gets mauled by a lion while protecting his half-brother, Dmitri (Fred Hechinger), but the lion drags Sergei to a little girl who heals him with a magic potion, turning him into an animalistic hunter who kills criminals. He later fights a guy with rhino skin. How did this not kill at the box office?
J.C. Chandor is a gifted writer-director with films such as Margin Call, All is Lost, A Most Violent Year, and Triple Frontier. Here he’s directing a comic book movie with a trio of writers based on characters created by two other writers, and while Kraven the Hunter isn’t as bad as its 15 percent Rotten Tomatoes critics score, it’s also not near as good as its 73 percent audience score.
I’m not sorry for skipping its theatrical run and also refusing to pay for VOD (video on demand), but when it showed up for free on Netflix, I pressed play, wondering if Chandor had made a total flop. No. Kraven is merely mediocre. Flip off your brain and see for yourself. (127 min.)
—Glen Starkey
This article appears in Apr 3-13, 2025.