“Man is the only animal to be dreaded.”
That’s the nugget of wisdom that Nikolai Kravinoff imparts to his eldest son, Sergei, as they crouch beside a freshly killed antelope. (Nikolai’s handiwork.)
Nikolai is a ruthless gangster. A murderer. A criminal kingpin who holds the reins of his ill-gotten empire with an iron and bloody fist. And he feels it’s about time Sergei learns the finer points of the family business.
But first, they’re going hunting. And not just for antelope. Nikolai has his sights set higher. He’s after the King of the Jungle. After all, according to the Kravinoff patriarch, “The man who kills legend becomes legend.”
As fate would have it, the king, a massive lion, does appear, confronting Sergei and his half-brother, Dmitri.
Sergei has the shot. But he hesitates. He’s not like his father. He doesn’t want to kill needlessly, for crime or for sport. Moreover, he seems to have a connection with this mighty creature. They seem to understand that neither one wants to hurt the other.
Until Nikolai shoots the lion.
Instead of killing the beast, the bullet sends it into a rage. Sergei is mauled and dragged off while Nikolai and Dmitri watch in horror.
After the lion leaves him for dead, Sergei is found by a young girl, Calypso. She uses a mystical healing potion to save him—but it has other effects, too. He gains animalistic strength, speed and senses.
The last thing Sergei wants to do is use those newfound gifts in service of his father’s criminal empire. In fact, he wants to rid the world of people like his father, who pour evil into the world.
He’ll become a hunter after all. A man for criminals to dread: Kraven the Hunter.
Though Sergei’s biological mother is not the same as Dmitri’s, it seems she loved and cared for them both. Both boys miss her and mourn her passing.
Sergei and Dmitri share a close brotherly bond. Growing up, they leaned on each other to endure their father’s harsh tutelage. Even as their paths diverged as adults, they kept in touch. Sergei visits Dmitri every year to celebrate his birthday. For his part, Dmitri forgives Sergei for abandoning him when they were young.
Later, when Dmitri is kidnapped by rival gangsters, Sergei does everything in his power to find his brother and bring him home. He is aided in this quest by Calypso, whom he reconnects with as an adult. She puts herself in danger to help Sergei find Dmitri and saves Sergei’s life multiple times.
Calypso also encourages Sergei to consider the costs of his actions and seems to want justice to be realized through the rule of law rather than vigilantism. (That said, characters waffle on this view throughout the film.) When given the opportunity, Dmitri refuses to betray his family.
Calypso describes her grandmother as a “mystic.” The older woman tells Calypso that tarot cards “show us the unseen road, in the right hands.” She’s the one who gave Calypso the magic potion that healed Sergei’s injuries and gave him his powers. After drinking the magic potion, Sergei sees flashes of arcane symbols and hears a voice call out to unnamed spirits. Sergei then carries a “strength” tarot card with him.
Calypso references the ancient Indian concept of karma. Dmitri says he was “born again” after a dangerous ordeal (though this term is not used in a strictly spiritual context). A gangster wears a cross necklace. Criminals hide in a monastery.
Dmitri is the result of his father’s extramarital affair. Nikolai speaks of his “wandering eye.” Sergei is seen shirtless a handful of times throughout the film.
Kraven the Hunter may be a Marvel film, but its revelry in gory violence is only rivaled by the Deadpool and Punisher properties. Countless people are shot, stabbed and skewered; nearly every kill is accompanied by a spray or smear of blood.
Much of this violence is perpetuated by the movie’s title character. Sergei (aka Kraven), by his own admission, “hunts people.” Those he stalks are criminals—poachers, smugglers, mobsters, mercenaries—and Sergei isn’t interested in offering them a shred of mercy. If you make his hit list, the only way off it is via a bloody, violent end. Regarding those who make that list? Well, Sergei’s not picky.
When Sergei isn’t adding to his body count, other characters deal plenty of death. An assassin known as The Foreigner uses his time-bending powers to kill several people. Nikolai fights a gang war against a rival mobster, The Rhino, and they leave a trail of bodies in their wake.
The Rhino’s thugs try to ambush Sergei with a variety of hunting traps. Sergei turns the tables on his attackers, and his counter-traps result in a lot of carnage—the most graphic of which sees a man being cleaved in two.
Quite a few animals get in on the violence, too. Lions, leopards and bears and bite, claw and trample characters. A few animals are shot. A lion is killed (offscreen) and its head is mounted on a wall. We see the remains of animals after poachers are finished with them. A dead deer hangs from a tree.
Someone is shot through the eye with a crossbow. We learn that Sergei’s mother died by suicide. An injured boy flatlines before resuscitating—we find out he had been clinically dead for three minutes. Someone’s finger is severed as a ransom proof. A man’s nose is bitten off. Nikolai treats his sons roughly. A prisoner is killed so someone can impersonate him.
The film leans into its R-rating to deliver language harsher than you’d expect from the usual Marvel flick. Eight f-words and six s-words are heard. Jesus’ name is abused twice, and God’s name is paired with “d–n” once.
We also hear uses of “h—,” “a–” and “a–hole,” “b-llocks,” “b–tard” and “p-ssed.”
People drink wine and liquor in a club and elsewhere. A father and his sons raise their glasses in a toast. One character gets drunk and needs to be helped back to his room. Someone is identified because he “smokes Turkish cigarettes.”
Sergei abandons Dmitri, leaving his younger brother behind with their father while Sergei pursues a different life. As if to justify his vigilantism, Sergei tells Calypso, “Sometimes the law can get in the way of justice.” Nikolai tells Sergei that he’s his “real son” and tries to manipulate him.
By the end of the film, a character becomes corrupted by power and the opportunity to prove himself. Prisoners are given the opportunity to “relieve themselves.”
Early in the film, Sergei breaks into a Russian prison to kill a mobster. Later, we find out why: He wanted to give Calypso some closure, as the mobster had a hand in murdering her friend. When he tells her this, she is quick to say, “I didn’t ask you to murder anyone.” But, after a beat, she adds that said dead mobster “got what he deserved.”
It’s a mixed message to say the least, and one indicative of the larger film. Kraven the Hunter feels like a jumble of conflicting ideas and values. In many ways, the story here unfolds like a standard Marvel action-adventure, something that wouldn’t seem entirely out of place next to some of the more recent MCU fare. But Kraven also tosses in graphic violence, blood and harsh language that’s beyond even the edgier, Sony-produced films like Venom or Morbius. (And just as each of those characters was once an arch-nemesis to Spider-Man, so it is here with his longtime antagonist Kraven—with Marvel’s famous Wall-Crawler nowhere in sight.)
The story has its moments, with positive messages about the bond of family and care for nature. But these messages are muddled at best here, and Kraven the Hunter treats human life as pretty expendable.
Combine those content concerns with a dash of magical mysticism, and Kraven the Hunter strays far outside family-friendly territory.
Bret loves a good story—be it a movie, show, or video game—and enjoys geeking out about things like plot and story structure. He has a blast reading and writing fiction and has penned several short stories and screenplays. He and his wife love to kayak the many beautiful Colorado lakes with their dog.
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