KRAVEN THE HUNTER (2024)

Kraven the Hunter
Directed by J.C. Chandor
Written by Richard Wenk and Art Marcum & Matt Holloway
Starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Russell Crowe, Alessandro Nivola, Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger
Running time 2 hours and 7 minutes
Rated R by the MPA for strong bloody violence, and language
In theaters December 13

by "Doc" Hunter Bush, Staff Writer and Podcast Director

Everyone hoping for a threepeat embarrassing failure like Morbius and Madame Web can put their knives away. Kraven has plenty of knives already.

Drawing on Richard Connell's 1924 short story The Most Dangerous Game-- the ur text for all human-hunting in popular culture-- the comicbook character Kraven was introduced in the early '60s as a villain for Spider-Man. The nepo baby son of a Russian crimelord, the man known as Kraven was a big game hunter who came to New York to hunt Spidey; decidedly a greater challenge than your average man. Over the years, Kraven has died, been resurrected, passed down the mantle to his assorted kids, and occasionally united with heroes against greater threats.

The Sony/Columbia/Marvel version of the character is, much like Venom (and to a lesser extent, Morbius), playing up the character's few moments of vigilante antiheroism. Aaron Taylor-Johnson's Kraven is a man who rejects his father's evil empire, and the assumption that he would one day grow to take it over. He lives alone on some family land in Siberia, keeping his animal friends safe from poachers and occasionally hunting down evil men like his father-- but importantly, NOT his father.

In the sixteen years since he left home, he's gotten in incredible shape, and become a bit of a crime world urban legend: The Hunter. Hmm... a well-traveled rich kid with mommy/daddy damage uses his privilege and fortune to strike fear into the heart of criminals as a mononymed boogeyman... That's correct, studious reader, Sony are trying to have their cake (Spider-Man related audience recognition and draw) and eat it too (but he's Batman).

In their desire to make a more grounded Nolan-like superhero film, they have actually concocted a decent narrative with battling crime families and a good deal of satisfying violence. Dead meat goons are exsanguinated by blades, fall victim to traps and poisons, and one notably gets split in half! There is CGI bloodmist aplenty! Kraven, like a certain bat-themed gentleman, doesn't use guns. He drops a throw-away explanatory line about a true hunter "only using what you were born with", but then constantly uses knives, arrows, and other weapons he was not born with to kill his 'prey'. That self-owning tendency for screenwriters Richard Wenk, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway to try to justify or explain everything is indicative of the big problem with Kraven as a film: it's trying SO HARD that it distracts from the fun you're having.

That's been an issue with all of Sony's non-Venom projects: the movies are so concerned with making the audience take silly stuff seriously, and promising future installments that they fail to properly embrace the silliness and make a truly engaging movie NOW, paradoxically ensuring that these promised future films never get made. Where Kraven stands apart is the movie happening now-- squished in between abundant backstory and a good deal of the aforementioned Sony Franchise Assurance Sickness©-- is actually good. It is at least not bad and it's nowhere near the disasters that Morbius (2022) and Madame Web (2024) were.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson is fun here, and carries the self-seriousness of this character pretty well. This shouldn't be a shock as ATJ has been regularly bringing it for years now, but I was pleasantly surprised by some supporting performances. Russell Crowe is, of course, doing his Russell Crowe thing-- which lately has consisted of being the only man Hollywood thinks can do an accent-- but it works just fine. Fred Hechinger as Kraven's cowering half-brother Dmitri gave me all the enjoyment of twitchy, early Joaquin Phoenix (a good thing); Alessandro Nivola makes a meal and a half out of his nascent crime lord with a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde condition; and Ariana DeBose does a fantastic job making her somewhat under-written occultist/lawyer play as really likable.

Yes, "occultist/lawyer". I told you there was silliness-- it's comicbooks, the silliness is implied!-- but even at Kraven's lowest points, it's just a bit corny. At the high points, it's really fun. ATJ doing parkour down the side of a luxury hotel, or throwing spears through a helicopter, or reading license plates from blocks away using his predator-vision-- like, in the bird of prey sense, not the Predator film series sense, even though that one does have its own famous POV-- it's the kind of cinematic junk food that appeals to me as a fan of genre silliness like Crank 2 (2009) or Face/Off (1997).

Ultimately, Kraven the Hunter is perfectly fine. Good, even. It could be better, but as we are well aware, it could have been SO MUCH worse. In a way, that's the greatest disappointment of the film as an object. Sony have apparently called it quits on their Spider-Man spin-off universe, so their delivering a half-decent offering feels like when your ex gives you a gift they bought before your split. Bittersweet. I'd sure enjoy this a lot more if I didn't know things were over.

Kraven the Hunter is in Theaters Friday, Dec. 13th, 2024

As a silly little bonus thing, here's a drawing I did of Kraven back in 2014:

"BULLET TRAIN" (2022)

Bullet Train (2022)
Dir. David Leitch
Written by Zak Olkewicz, based on a novel by Kôtarô Isawa
Starring Brad Pitt, Joey King, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry, (Michael Shannon)
Running time 2 hours, 6 minutes
Rated R for bloody violence, pervasive language
In theaters August 5th

By “Doc” Hunter Bush, Podcast Czar

Boy howdy did I have a good time with Bullet Train! While it’s not going to leave any lasting emotional imprint on you, or win accolades for its stunt work or choreography, David Leitch’s latest is a big, candy colored actioner with hit after hit of instant gratification, like pumping dollar after dollar into a gachapon machine. It does some really interesting things with music, and running gags and in its best moments genuinely approaches the avant-garde. BUT. Fair warning (and my biggest point of criticism) There’s not enough Michael Shannon. Not by damn sight.

Brad Pitt plays a mercenary returning to the job after some time off while he’s been seeing a therapist and generally trying to self-actualize past his belief that he is cursed with unending bad luck. To that end, his handler has christened him Ladybug as his new codename, drawing on the belief that Ladybugs are lucky. He’s non-violent and only took this particular job because A) it’s supposed to a basic Grab-The-Briefcase-And-Leave job, and B) the other guy called out sick.

Unfortunately for him, the briefcase is located on the titular bullet train traveling to Kyoto which is positively bursting with other, much less pacifistic mercenaries. As they make themselves known to the audience, and/or Ladybug, the film jumps around in time explaining how and why they’re all unknowingly convening on this train. Some are working, some are seeking revenge. The twins, Lemon and Tangerine (Brian Tyree Henry and Aaron Taylor-Johnson respectively) are escorting the son of a crime boss, recently rescued (by them) from kidnappers. The briefcase Ladybug is after was the ransom money, but he doesn’t exactly know that.

Also on the train is Kimura (Andrew Koji), a father whose son was pushed from the roof of a department store. He was lured to the train by the person responsible, who intends to use Kimura as a weapon against the same crime boss whose son is now on board. This crime boss is Michael Shannon, a Russian who rose through the ranks of a Japanese crime family due to his sheer brutality, despite his outsider status. His name is White Death, and his shadow looms large over the entire film but, despite getting a bunch of his backstory early on, Bullet Train is disappointingly light on Shannon.

Michael Shannon, as the folks at the bus stop are tired of hearing me say, is one of our greatest living actors. He chooses projects sparingly, so any time he shows up in something, I crave a full film’s worth of the man some call “Big Chicago”. By that metric Premium Rush, The Shape of Water, and Take Shelter are all great Michael Shannon movies while Bullet Train is a great movie with a Michael Shannon deficiency. And hey, I get it: White Death is a great, extremely fun role to see Shannon play and the story is structured in such a way that he shows up the perfect amount for the character. It’s also just not the right amount of Mike Shannon. Both of these things can be true.

The flick isn’t lacking in characters by any means, and they’re of the big, colorful variety that all but demand trading cards. As opposed to something like Atomic Blonde (also directed by David Leitch) where the characters are a little more grounded in a reality, everyone in Bullet Train could almost have wandered out of the world of The Venture Bros. The Wolf (Bad Bunny, né Benito A Martínez Ocasio) for example, is a Mexican knife pervert still wearing the bloodstained suit from his wedding, seeking revenge on the persons responsible for the death of not only his wife-to-be, but the entire wedding party. He has about ten minutes total screen time, yet I have a good handle on his character and motivations. There doesn’t need to be any more of him in the movie than there is, but he’s such a fun character that I wouldn’t have minded if there was.

The same goes for pretty much all the characters. Some get more development and screen time than others, but only one feels underserved - Zazie Beetz as The Hornet. She serves more as a plot device than a character which would be a problem in any case but here, it’s doubly so for wasting Beetz, though I presume that her cameo is more of a favor to David Leitch who directed her in Deadpool 2.

There’s a certain visual flair to Bullet Train that really works. It’s not something wholly original, it’s just being done here better than in a number of similar films that attempt it: the totemizaton of objects. Certain items become tied to the characters and can be tracked throughout numerous interactions and fight scenes so much so that, late in the film, there’s a ten second break where we follow the adventures of a particular inanimate object from its boarding the train to the then-current moment. It’s a sequence that really shines and feels like something you’d expect from more narratively experimental directors like Daniels, for example. And somehow, despite happening in the middle of a semi-climactic battle, it doesn’t do anything to upset the flow of the movie or the dramatic build of the scene.

If there’s one thing that I can say Bullet Train did better than most any other film I’ve seen this year, it’s creating pleasantly modular action sequences. In an era where big, messy, sprawling (heavily CGI) fights are the soup du jour, Bullet Train relies on clever choreography and contained spaces. For example, Ladybug and Lemon have a fight where they never leave the booth they’re sitting in on the train’s quiet car, but it’s fun, and inventive, and the action is easy to follow and unpredictable. The geometry of the train lends itself perfectly to choreographic reinvention and creative camera work.

Perhaps it’s a reaction to the gravity of the last few years, but 2022 has already had so many Big Fun movies released. With that as a barometer, Bullet Train fits nicely alongside things like Everything Everywhere All at Once, RRR, The Princess, The Lost City, and even Elvis. Regardless of their differing aims as far as meaning, you’ll find yourself smiling and engaged the entire time. In execution, Bullet Train comes off somewhere between James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad (2021) and any of John Woo’s ‘90s output (Face/Off, Broken Arrow, etc.). I’m a physical media supporter, so when I tell you I can’t wait to own a copy of this, I hope you know how much I mean it.

Bullet Train is in theaters Friday, August 5th