In the Kraven the Hunter Calypso Ezilie should have had her own role to play. Instead she acted as another tracker when we already had the self-proclaimed greatest hunter of the world, Kraven.
Who is the better tracker, Kraven or Calypso Ezilie?
Kraven had a strong start. His first hunt in the movie remind me of Agent 47 from the Hitman game series. Kraven killed an inmate, disguised as him, infiltrated a maximum security prison, took out the main target, Semyon Chorney and then escaped into thin air. Same as Agent 47 the Hunter also considered as just an urban legend or a myth because their targets did not live to tell tales about their attackers.
Kraven himself admitted to be the perfect hunter in the world. And the reputation of the Hunter in the criminal world backs up his claim. Everyone feared to be on his list because the Hunter was unstoppable and he was going to find his targets no matter what. Well at least that was the case until Calypso Ezilie started to do part of Kraven’s job for him. She started to track people better than the best hunter of the world.
Let’s see evidence for Kraven’s superior tracking ability. First he tracked the poacher, Andre Lavigne from Eastern Russia to London. And reached Andre’s employer Mr. Taglin before the poacher and killed both of them. Before he died Andre offered to help Kraven to find other people in their criminal network. Kraven confidently said to him that he does not need Andre’s help to find others. At least Kraven had a license plate number of the poacher’s jeep to track him. In next example he basically had nothing to go on.
Kraven tracked down Calypso using her grandmother’s tarot card. It took him 16 years to finally meet her again. I bet he was relentless in his pursuit of this unknown person who healed him and gave his powers using a mysterious potion, because he was actively trying to figure out Papa Legba Potion for years.
Third, this is a direct quote from Kraven: “Calypso, I was made to do this. I’m the greatest hunter on this planet. It’s undeniable. There’s nobody I can’t track down, nobody I can’t beat.”
Calypso Ezili the Investigative Lawyer
I thought “Investigative Lawyer” was a made up word. I have heard about investigative journalists but not lawyers. Apparently that is a thing (according to Google). We will never know why Kraven came asking her help in the first place because Rhino intervened and derailed their focus from the Kraven’s List before Calypso could do her investigative lawyer thing.
When Dimitri got abducted Kraven asked Calypso’s help to find the abductors. Calypso found the main culprit Omer Ozdemir and his hideout in Turkey. And later she was the one who alerted Kraven when the Rhino was on the move. Apparently she has better underworld connections than Kraven.
Instead of reducing her to a secondary tracker, writers should have utilized Calypso Ezili’s comic book skill set and show us her Voodoo Priestess side.
Uncanny valley CGI animals
Kraven’s story revolves around animals. So there are variety of animals in the movie. Almost all of them are CGI animals. Don’t get me wrong. Animators had done a great job of creating them because animal models have great details on them. But as soon as they move, you can sense that eerie, uncanny valley feeling about them. Their movements do not feel natural at all.
Is it cheaper to use CGI animals in movies rather than real animals? I’m asking this because there are two scenes that I noticed which could have done using real animals with ease. First one is the lone wolf in the snow storm. Second one is when Kraven was hunting fish with his bare hands, the fish swimming in the stream were CGI. Isn’t it easier to get a trained dog which looks like a wolf and create a pond and fill it with some fish rather than painstakingly create CGI creatures?
I’m not bothered by Rhino’s CGI because he is a fictional creature. But CGI animals bothered me a little bit.
Kraven’s World feels empty
Movie world felt empty in two ways. First, some scenes were literally empty of background activities and background actors. Most glaring example is when the Foreigner started to track Kraven, he went to the maximum security Russian prison. There he encountered only one prison guard. Guard saw him, called him out. The Foreigner shot the guard after using his hypnotic power on that poor man. It is a cool way to introduce his character. But he was within the prison walls, in the same area where Kraven got shot at by many prison guards who were armed with automatic rifles and on high vantage points like a bridge and a guard tower. So where all other guards and prisoners were went?
In the last scene of Nikolai Kravinoff where Kraven let a bear attack his father, Nikolai was camping in the jungle with a hunting party. There were 4 or 5 tents that I can see. But in that scene there were no one else to be seen.
After the club shootout where the Rhino’s assassin’s failed to assassinate Nikolai, people in the background evacuated the club very quickly. No one stayed behind or came back to checkup on their boss and his son. When Nikolai was expressing his disappointment about his younger son’s lack of courage, background was empty.
Second thing which makes the world feels empty is the lack of proper reaction from people. When Kraven got attacked by a snow leopard Calypso watched them fight like she was watching two people having a conversation.
When Dimitri demonstrated his Chameleon abilities no one expect Kraven bat an eye. There was a man changing his appearance to look like another man, then turned into a bald headed chameleon looking creature before turning into his original self. Every passing pedestrian acted like it was an everyday occurrence.
Few thugs came and abducted Dimitri from his penthouse. There was evidence of a struggle in his apartment. How did they take struggling Dimitri from top of the building to the ground floor without alerting anyone in the building? Answer is no one cares in this universe, anyone can enter a building to grab any high profile person because no one is going to react to a bunch of intruders and try to stop them. Also Calypso was almost abducted by a group of men who just strolled in to her workplace without stopping by the security. Both these incidents took place in broad daylight, in seemingly secure places in London.
Kraven’s disregard for leaving behind evidence in crime scenes
Speaking of lack of security, where is the police in this world? Why no one from law enforcement is trying to find the man who has been killing rich crime bosses? It’s not hard to conclude that all the killings were done by the same man because Kraven wasn’t afraid of leaving behind evidence in crime scenes. In Mr. Taglin’s office he opened a pen using his mouth and then spat out the clip before crossing out Andre’s name. Then he threw away the pen and left the office. He left behind his finger prints, saliva samples, and possibly some hair samples and partial teeth marks. Criminals in this world can get their hands on state of the art facial recognition software which can give you super-secret information about the subject, so law enforcement should have better resources to catch a careless criminal.
No one alive knows Kraven’s name, but many people know him by that name
The man who abducted Dimitri, Omer Ozdemir called Kraven by his name. Kraven was under the impression that no one alive knows his name except Calypso. So it threw Kraven off his guard. Upon further interrogation the man said he heard the name from The Rhino. Rhino saw that name in the facial recognition video. That video was released by Kraven’s own father. So he could have made a fake facial recognition effect to leak his son’s details or it could have been a legit detection software. However it does not explain how the alias “Kraven” got on there. Because Kraven’s father did not know it at that time.
Kraven and his brother’s beautiful relationship
In the dysfunctional family of Kravinoffs’, Sergei and Dimitri had a wholesome brotherly bond. So I thought there’s going to be a twist where Dimitri is going to be a cunning villain. First when Kraven abandoned him with their father, Dimitri did not grow up to be an evil person like his father. Then Rhino offered a partnership to Dimitri but he turned it down. Finally when the Rhino was injured and dying, Kraven asked Rhino who gave the video of him.
Rhino replied “How is it that even the great Hunter can’t see what was always right in front of him?”
And then camera pan to Dimitri holding a gun behind Kraven. I thought “yes, I knew it. Here comes the twist. Dimitri was the mastermind all along.” But I was wrong.
All the time Dimitri was mimicking voices of other people, I did not understand the clue behind it because I was unaware of the Marvel supervillain Chameleon. I thought that he is like a Mimic (Mimics are paranormal entities who mimic someone’s voice to lure people towards danger.) I had a feeling that Dimitri is going to see Professor Miles Warren after Rhino told Dimitri about him.
Dimitri taking up his father’s business was not a surprise twist for me.
As Dimitri said “The Rhino is gone. Dad is gone. It’s all just there, for the taking. I’m gonna take it.”
At that point Dimitri turning into a crime boss did not feel like a twist because there was a power vacuum and Dimitri was in a suitable place to fill it.
I would like to see the fallout between this two brothers after Dimitri become a crime boss like his father or surpass his father by using his Chameleon powers. But it seems like we are not going to see that happening any time soon. There are no news about making a Kraven the Hunter sequel.
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