‘Kraven the Hunter’ Review: Craven? Not Quite, but Aaron Taylor-Johnson Stars in a Marvel Action Movie Where Everything Feels Derivative

variety.com:

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic When you build a film around an action star (Jason Statham, say), he’ll do a lot of things that only happen in the movies: lay waste to five goons with his bare hands in two minutes, drive vehicles at dizzying speeds down the ancient staircases of a European metropolis, leap from balconies and hang from the rudders of buzz-diving helicopters.

When you think about it, he’s a lot like a superhero, except that his actions are all, in theory, reality-based. Sergei Kravinoff (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), better known as “Kraven the Hunter,” does a lot of that stuff too, only he’s no “action hero.” He’s a Marvel character with a superhuman edge.

Kraven made his first appearance in the comics in 1964 as an adversary of Spider-Man, and Spider-Man is the character whose abilities he most recalls.

He can shimmy up the sides of buildings and plunge from them without getting scratched. In the film’s grabby opening sequence, he infiltrates a Siberian prison to assassinate a crime lord (which he does the old-fashioned way — by grabbing a tooth out of a saber-tooth-tiger trophy head and stabbing the baddie in the neck).