Film / Black Crab

Black Crab is a 2022 Swedish action thriller, a film adaptation of the novel Svart Krabba by Jerker Virdborg.

Caroline Edh (Noomi Rapace) is a soldier of an unnamed Nordic country torn by Civil War and social collapse. She and five other soldiers are chosen for a dangerous mission that could change the tide of the war—to carry a Secret Weapon through enemy territory by ice-skating across the frozen sea surrounding the archipelago they are stationed on. Edh regards it as a Suicide Mission, but has a strong incentive to succeed after being told her daughter (who has been missing since the start of the war) is alive in a refugee camp at their destination. Edh is prepared to sacrifice everything, including her own humanity, to be reunited with her.

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This movie has the following tropes:

• Action Mom: Caroline Edh. She's helpless when her daughter is kidnapped in front of her, but the subsequent years of combat have turned her into a hardened soldier.
• Agony of the Feet: Edh loses three toes to frostbite.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • Lieutenant Nylund claims to be taking Edh to the base, but drives her to a refugee camp instead and tells her to wait in the vehicle while he does an errand. She's then attacked by an armed gang trying to steal her vehicle, but is able to fight them off and escape. Nylund later turns up unharmed when he's roped in to the mission to replace a missing man. Edh suspects she was set up to be killed and doesn't trust him, while Nylund accuses her of driving off and abandoning him.
  • Karimi is discovered on the radio right when an enemy helicopter is bearing down on them. Is he an enemy agent, or was he trying to contact his girlfriend (a communications operator in the destroyed F28 base) as he claimed? After he's killed (ironically by a genuine enemy agent) a woman claiming to be the girlfriend calls on the radio asking for him, but it's pointed out she could just as easily be the enemy trying to locate them.
• Bait the Dog: After Captain Forsberg falls through the ice, Edh dives fearlessly into the chilly water. Turns out she's risking death not to save her, but to retrieve the cannisters on which the mission depends.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: Edh and Nyland decide to destroy the virus, but they are unarmed and crippled from their injuries. They are however decorated heroes, which gets them up to the door to the laboratory before the guards try to stop them.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted; even at the start of the mission Edh has visible facial injuries.
• Closest Thing We Got: Edh is a champion speed skater familiar with the terrain, but the others are just whoever the military could get hold of with ice-skating experience in the middle of a war. Malik for instance is an ice hockey player who doesn't even recognise the skates they're using.
• Crapsack World: A Civil War is devastating the country, most of the population is in refugee camps, armed gangs are stealing and kidnapping children, and atrocities are committed on both sides. There's an apocalyptic atmosphere that several characters compare to the end of the world foretold in Norse Mythology. Then we discover that the military authorities are willing to virtually wipe out the civilian population and Restart the World rather than lose the war.
• Crashing Dreams: Edh keeps dreaming of the last day she saw her daughter. In one dream, she's washing her daughter's hair when their city is bombed by enemy planes; she then wakes up to find their base is being shelled by the enemy. In another dream her daughter warns of approaching enemy soldiers, and she wakes up to find an enemy patrol about to attack them.
• Danger — Thin Ice: For the first time in decades the sea ice around the archipelago has frozen from shore to shore. It's not thick enough for vehicles, but hopefully soldiers on ice skates can make it across. Hopefully...
• Day of the Jackboot: The legitimate government is said to have fallen, meaning the military appears to be the only functioning authority.
• Dead Man's Switch: Soldiers catch Caroline Edh after she's stolen the weaponized virus from the laboratory, only to reveal she's taped the two vials to a hand grenade and is holding down the safety lever. Admiral Nordh tries to persuade her to hand them over, but she works her way to a ledge above the sea and jumps off, detonating the grenade in mid-air to destroy the virus.
• The Determinator: Deconstructed with Edh, whose desire to be reunited with her daughter at all cost blinds her to what she's doing to achieve this.
• Dressing as the Enemy: Edh and Nyland dress in the white Hazmat Suits and evacuate with everyone else to get past the guards at the laboratory, leading to a White Hazmat Suit of Death as the former bleeds out.
• Empathy Doll Shot: Edh has to tell herself to Get a Hold of Yourself, Woman! after finding a bloodstained cuddly toy in the frozen luxury liner.
• Evil Wears Black: Averted; the enemy wears snow camouflage while the squad wears dark uniforms as their mission takes place at night. Played straight with Admiral Nordh and her soldiers.
• False Innocence Trick: In the refugee camp a woman approaches Edh begging for help for her sick child. The swaddling clothes actually hide a machete that she tries to cut Edh up with.
• Fatal Family Photo: A subversion; Edh asks to keep the photo of her grown-up daughter. She survives the mission only to discover the photo is a fake. Other soldiers play the variation straight by discussing what they'll do after the war, only to get killed.
• Fictional Country: The islands of Tessenøy and Ödö don't exist.
• Flashbacks: Edh has several dreams about the last day she saw her daughter.
• Friendly Sniper: Granvik is the youngest and most innocent member of the group.
• Gender Flip: In the novel the protagonist is a man, Karl Edh.
• Good All Along: Nyland appears to set Edh up to be killed in the refugee camp, and steals the virus right before enemy soldiers attack, making it look like he's an enemy agent. Turns out he just wants to destroy the virus to prevent it from being used. He works with Edh to ensure it's destroyed and is the only member of the group to survive.
• Hallucinations: As Edh treks alone across the ice to Ödö, she's haunted by hallucinations of the other soldiers who died to get her this far.
• Hammer and Sickle Removed for Your Protection: The 'enemy' is unnamed, with no insignia on their uniforms or helicopters, and there's no discussion of the war aims or motivations of either side.
• I Will Only Slow You Down: Edh wants to abandon Malik in the ice-bound liner after he's gutshot, to the violent objection of Granvik. He shoots himself to settle the issue. Later Edh also gets wounded in the guts and tricks Nyland into getting on the evacuation helicopter to secure her seat, moments before Admiral Nordh's men catch up with her.
• Jumping on a Grenade: Granvik is shot right after he pulls the pin on a grenade. Edh shoots the enemy soldier and Granvik grabs the grenade to throw it out of the foxhole, but it explodes killing him and wounding Edh.
• Just Following Orders: A subversion; Edh gives this excuse after discovering what they're carrying, but it's just a cover for her real motive.
• Make an Example of Them: Soldiers who deserted are shown hanging from a freeway overpass.
• Medal of Dishonor: Edh wakes up a crippled hero, and Admiral Nordh gives her a promotion and a medal. Ironically Nyland gets the same, after being shot by Edh trying to destroy the virus. Edh only cares about seeing her daughter; on being told it was all a lie, she attacks the admiral who pinned the medal on her.
• Mildly Military: The soldiers are a mix of reservists and hastily-trained civilians, and they make mistakes that bring the enemy down on them on several occasions.
• Missing Child: In the opening scene, Edh is trying to evacuate her daughter from the bombed city when she's snatched by an armed gang to an unknown fate.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Edh sacrifices her comrades and cripples herself to see her daughter again, only to discover it was a Motivational Lie to give her the Heroic Willpower to get through. Worse, if her daughter really is alive somewhere, the weapon she's delivered is a biological virus that will kill most of the civilian population and ensure her death.
• One Last Job: The soldiers are promised they will be released from military service if they succeed in their mission. It's probably another Motivational Lie and even if it were true, where would they go with a doomsday virus devastating the country?
• Operation: [Blank]: Operation Black Crab, which also serves as a password/countersign.
• Redemption Equals Death: Edh blows up herself along with the virus to ensure it will never be used.
• Ruins of the Modern Age: While Edh is being driven through her former hometown, they drive past an apartment building with a massive shell hole ripped through it. Later they come across a luxury liner frozen into the ice.
• Safe Zone Hope Spot: The group take refuge from a patrolling helicopter on an island where they discover an elderly couple in one of the houses who refused to evacuate. Then Edh looks under the table and sees a submachine gun hidden there...
• Secret Weapon: The two cannisters contain a biological weapon that will kill everyone not in a sealed bunker.
• Sincerity Mode: During the mission briefing, Colonel Raad tells his aide to drop the propaganda and tell the unvarnished truth about how dire the situation is. Put bluntly, they're losing the war and the mission is their only hope of achieving victory.
• Sole Survivor
  • Lance Corporal Karimi was assigned to the mission from base F28, right before it was wiped out by the enemy with no survivors. His girlfriend was a soldier there so he doesn't take the news well.
  • An enemy soldier opens fire on them from a bunker. He's shot by Granvik and when Edh storms the bunker, she discovers that the other soldiers there have already frozen to death.
• The Squadette: They do have a female captain but she's killed early on, leaving Edh the only female member of The Squad.
• So Much for Stealth
  • After they take refuge in an abandoned house, an enemy troop-carrying helicopter heads for them; either because it saw the smoke from the fire used to warm Edh from hypothermia, or the enemy picked up Karami's radio transmission.
  • Edh turns on her flashlight attachment at night and draws a helicopter gunship. Later they light a fire in an enemy bunker to avoid freezing like its previous occupants, and the next day a patrol turns up to investigate. Nyland, who was supposed to be on guard duty, doesn't help by choosing to desert the mission instead.
• Suicide Mission: A hundred nautical miles behind enemy lines across frozen sea ice at night. Edh flat-out tells Colonel Raad it's a suicide mission.
• Symbolic Serene Submersion: After Edh blows herself up to destroy the virus, there's a shot of her floating under the water, embracing her daughter.
• Think of the Children!: When Edh is holding the Dead Man's Switch, Admiral Nordh urges her to think of her daughter. She does, and blows herself up to save her.
• Throw-Away Guns: A wounded Edh ditches the heavy sniper rifle as she treks across the ice towards Ödö. She's used up the last rounds anyway.
• Two-Faced: Captain Forsberg has scarring on half of her face.
• War Is Hell
  • The troop train carrying Edh and other soldiers is also carrying plastic-wrapped corpses.
  • While ice-skating across the sea they literally stumble across the bodies of civilians frozen under the ice. There's speculation as to what happened; did a boat capsize, or were they killed by the enemy? It's pointed out that their own side could just as easily have been responsible.
  • Granvik was Buried in a Pile of Corpses along with his childhood friend. This caused him to enlist, only to find that his own side weren't any different.