Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger, Alessandro Nivola, Christopher Abbott, and Russell Crowe

Directed by JC Chandor

Sony, out now

 Sergei Kravinoff and his half brother Dimitri are taken out of school by their father Nikolai to begin training to succeed him. Nikolai is a mobster and newly widowed. Instead of letting his children grieve, he takes them hunting. Sergei is almost killed by a lion of near impossible strength and is only saved by Calypso, a young woman who is strangely drawn to her grandmother’s Tarot deck. He recovers, discovers that he has gained some of the lion’s abilities and strengths and flees his father. Years later, Sergei is the Hunter, a scourge of the underworld. And the family business is returning to haunt him.

It’s better than Morbius, and arguably as entertaining as Madame Web but this final entry in Sony’s unofficial trilogy of unnecessarily Spider-Man-free sort-of Spider-verse films suffers from the same problems as both its siblings. Like Morbius it’s an origin story which functions as a chapter 1 for a story we’ll never get. Like Madame Web, it tries some truly interesting things that get swallowed by the need to serve the universe that Sony have some ownership, but no understanding, of.

The good news is there’s some good news. Russell Crowe gives good mobster dad and Alessandro Nivola as the villain of the piece and Fred Hechinger as Dimitri do good work too. Ariana DeBose is utterly wasted as Calypso and Christopher Abbott’s creepy turn as the Foreigner, an assassin, is largely a side trip. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is great and actually finds some of the ambiguity the movie is desperate for.

Richard Wenk, Matt Holloway and Art Marcum are solid to good writers and the story they’ve told here has good bones. A man realising his familial trauma can’t be hunted down, a hunter discovering he’s not at the top of the food chain. An arrested adolescent growing up. It’s all good, powerful stuff but none of it’s ever explored in enough depth to matter. JC Chandor, whose astonishing back catalogue includes Robert Redford solo classic All is Lost and Chastain and Isaac vehicle A Most Violent Year, has a good eye for action and performance alike. There are flashes, especially the opening prison break and a cross-London chase, of brilliance here. But the movie never quite has enough room, never feels quite locked in. The Spider-Man teases are few and obscure but they don’t help either. Is it in the same universe as the others? Is it in the present day? If so why wouldn’t Kraven want to hunt Venom? Or know about the Spider-Women? Or Morbius? You never quite settle, and neither does the movie.

It’s a shame because there’s honestly something here. A clearer view of what was needed, a willingness to go to the darkness the movie flirts with rather than its overt fondness of flashy violence, and giving DeBose something to actually do would all have helped.

Verdict: As it stands, this is a frustrating, if competent, end to Sony’s deeply weird experiment. It’s surprisingly fun, but everyone, on both sides of the camera, deserved better. 6/10

Alasdair Stuart