Mark Reviews Movies: BLACK CRAB

Black Crab, Netflix

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 17, 2022

A civil war has already broken out in Sweden at the start of Black Crab. We learn little to nothing about the politics, factions, or causes of this conflict, and that's the right move on the part of the screenplay by director Adam Berg and Pelle Rådström. This is the story of a single mission amidst that bigger war, and more to the point, it's a story about how far people are willing to go, what they're willing to do, and which actions they cannot abide within the scope of conflict.

At first, the central idea itself, from the novel by Jerker Virdborg, doesn't seem as if it'll touch upon such concerns. Indeed, the premise almost sounds a bit too ridiculous for any of it work, but the film does, while also digging into deeper concepts and matters of character along the way.

We first meet Caroline Edh (Noomi Rapace), who is driving with her daughter when news on the radio begins announcing an onslaught of attacks. In a frightening sequence of sudden escalation, gunfire echoes in the distance, and people begin running past the car. Soon enough, Caroline spots soldiers shooting people on the road, in their cars and as they flee, but hiding in the backseat doesn't save the two from being spotted.

Sometime later, Caroline is a soldier on the opposing side of the conflict. There's no sense of the specific goals or political affiliations of either side, and there doesn't need to be. The country's government has collapsed, and while the rest of the world seems to have gone as normal (Someone talks about watching American hockey games when he gets out or the war ends), Sweden has ripped itself apart, with two factions only set on destroying each other.

Caroline is unexpectedly summoned to a base, and after her contact Nylund (Jakob Oftebro) almost gets her killed by leaving her amidst desperate people, she arrives at the base and learns her mission. She and a team are to skate across the frozen sea, along an archipelago in the north, and reach a remote island. They will take two canisters, containing some unknown and classified MacGuffin essentially. Their side is losing, the base's commander (played by David Dencik) informs the team, but what's inside these canisters could end the war with their victory.

In front of the team, Caroline, a skilled and apparently renowned ice skater, insists this is a suicide mission, but privately, the commander gives her some additional information. Her daughter is safe on the island of the mission's destination. If she makes it with the canisters, Caroline will be re-united and can live out her life with her daughter as she wants.

The rest of the plot, after a rush from the base and the haunting image of a rocket attack upon it in the stillness of the night, follows the team on their long trek, unaware of their cargo but determined to put an end to the war. The others include Granvik (Erik Enge), Malik (Dar Salim), Karimi (Ardalan Esmaili), and Forsberg (Aliette Opheim). The last one's high rank belies her importance in this story, but her fate, when she falls through the ice with the canisters on her, shows how single-minded Caroline is in accomplishing the mission—no matter the cost. The final team member is Nylund, whom Caroline doesn't trust (because she doesn't know why he made that stop), but that feeling is mutual between them (because she left him behind).

All of this is very simple, since it is just a point-A-to-point-B plot, and despite the initial suspicion that the ice-skating gimmick is a bit too silly and unlikely to function, Berg portrays it with a level of grace and loneliness. As the team glides along the dark and vast expanses of ice, the camera moves closely along them or observes the quiet stillness of their motions against a night sky.

There are obstacles and challenges, of course, as enemy forces on foot and in a stalking helicopter try to find and stop them. This provides several action sequences, as the members of the gradually diminishing team flee from the hovering searchlight of the chopper and get into a firefight or two, but it's the moments between the silence of the journey and the noise of conflict that really matter.

Tensions rise among the team, because of choices each one makes or doesn't make along the way, and all of that finally comes to a head when Caroline and those who remain discover what's inside those canisters. What arises out of this is a debate about the morality and ethics of war—or even if such concerns do or should exist amidst the horrors, violence, and atrocities of combat (Bodies, frozen beneath and within the ice, from a sunken lifeboat force a quick argument about which side might have killed them).

The fascinating thing is how blinded some of these characters are to such questions and thoughts on account of their personal investments (Caroline is only trying to reach her daughter, obviously, but Karimi also puts the mission—and his own life, at the hands of his teammates—in jeopardy by trying to contact his girlfriend). They're right, even though they're completely wrong, and it's that sense of moral relativity, especially in how it can be exploited, that makes up the story's final conflict.

The spectacle of the skating, the fighting, and the apocalyptic backdrop and eventual stakes of Black Crab is impressive. Beneath that, though, is a thoughtful and considered film about the moral fog of war.

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