Those who have heard ofBlack Crabprobably don’t know much about it, as the trailers and Netflix description don’t give away much. This is a movie about six Swedish soldiers ice skating across the frozen landscape to deliver an important package during a post-apocalyptic civil war. Yes, that idea is fairly absurd. Yes, the movie treats it more seriously than the average World War II movie treats Operation Overlord. No, it doesn’t hold up most of the way.
The movie comes to Netflix courtesy of Swedish director Adam Berg, in his feature film debut after a career in commercials and music videos. Noomi Rapace, ofGirl with the Dragon TattooandPrometheusfame, takes the starring role as a mother turned soldier desperately seeking her missing daughter. Rescuing or reuniting with a missing child is a time-honored motivation for a lead character, butBlack Crabtakes the idea to an almost comical extreme.
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Black Crabdoesn’t feel the need to explain much, there’s no good or badside in the war. The side the audience isn’t following is obliquely referred to as “the enemy”, and the details of who did which war crimes are absent. It’s mostly focused on the immediate human drama of its six main characters, but it does bring up the war with such frequency that the lack of detail becomes annoying. Rapace and her new team are summoned under unclear circumstances and told that they’ll be ice skating an absurd distance, in the dark, behind enemy lines. They are given a package to deliver, but not told what’s in it. It’s hard to imagine what level of preparedness one might need to commit to that assignment, but six or seven minutes probably doesn’t cut it.
There’s not anything particularly great aboutBlack Crab, but there are a few good points. The performances are all serviceable, so long as viewers are okay with a foreign language. The film is originally in Swedish, but an English dub is available. The mouth movements rarely match up, and there’s the occasional weird delivery, but it’s up to each viewer whether that outweighshaving to read subtitles. The music is pretty good, it’s a dark electronic soundtrack that compliments the grim tone. The action scenes, though few and far between, are well-choreographed and tense. Tracer rounds fly through the night, stuff blows up with charming regularity, the geography is always clear. The shootouts aren’t mind-blowing, but they are solid enough for the realistic tone. It’s not going to be aJohn Wickmovie, but there are still better action scenesin more grounded films.
One of the biggest weak points of the filmis its main characters. It’s not a problem of performance, it’s very much the writing and the pacing. The six soldiers on the Black Crab mission fail to stand out. Each has a maximum of one character trait; such as having a girlfriend, obsessing over rank, enjoying antiques, or having a daughter. As the journey goes on, members of the team die, but it’s hard to miss them. A couple of them drop so quickly or say so little that viewers will likely forget they were there by the grand climax. Almost every character feels pulled from a different and often better film, and unfortunately, so does almost every major scene. There is a big twist in this film, and spoilers follow for that element. Worry not, however, most savvy viewers will be able to guess shortly after thenecessary MacGuffin is introduced.
The big reveal ofBlack Crabis that the eponymous operation tasks a small military unit with ice skating for miles to deliver a deadly bioweapon to fellow soldiers. That particular bomb doesn’t drop until midway through the second act, and once it does, it feels like it’s changed everything. Every character knows and agrees that delivering the payload means millions of deaths, on the enemy and home teams. One of the soldiers kills himself to avoid participating in the end of the world. Most just debate the moral calculus of the action, while sticking around beforetheir almost inevitable death.
The main character soldiers on and unquestioningly sacrifices herself and her cohorts to deliver the plague. Not out of an unstoppable patriotic desire to win the war, not because she’s unwaveringly committed to her orders, but because she’s been promised that she can see her daughter. Only when seeing her daughter is no longer on the table does she even consider the possibility that releasing a deadly virus on everyone might be a bad choice.
Every character has a few stupid decisions to their name, but the bigger problem is that they aren’t likable. Bad enough that the main character is pursuing the death of all things for selfish reasons, but she spends her first action scene gunning down the poor and desperate. The few decent moments inBlack Crabdon’t outweigh its complete lack of originality and charm. It’s a deeply middling film, made more unpleasant by its resemblance tosome current news footage. Forgettable and dull, give it a pass.
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Black Crab
Black Crab is a Swedish action thriller directed by Adam Berg. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, it follows Caroline Edh, played by Noomi Rapace, a speed skater turned soldier, who is sent on a perilous mission across a frozen archipelago. Tasked with delivering a crucial package that could end the war, she must navigate hostile terrain and uncover hidden truths about her mission and the conflict.
