tmpsvita

Great cinematography, beautiful scenarios and well directed, Black Crab has everything it needed on the technical side and all the elements on the narrative one necessary to make a compelling and engaging war movie, it can also relies on an, as always, extraordinary Noomi Rapace but it drags itself for too long on thin ice, the pace is a bit too slow and it's too easy to loose interest in the characters and in the story itself.

This is fortunately and unfortunately everything you expect from a Wes Anderson movie.

Like most of his works I experience the same, weird and unique process: in the first 10-15 minutes i love every single shot and every single word then it slowly and progressively irritates me, too many words and phrases, too many perfect shot studied in such a meticulous way that makes me angry and anxious, til I get to the point where I just want to turn it off (40-45 minutes in, usually) then past this point I lose the battle and I just surrender to his style and I let myself be carried away by it, at the it ends up being a fascinating, beautiful and exciting experience that I want to repeat again and again.

And this movie is the Manifesto of this.

A film that starts from premises, although not exactly original, nevertheless interesting and that could have led to captivating developments if only the screenplay and the direction had been able to dare more.

The film instead chooses safer and less tortuous paths, thus missing the few possibilities it had to be able to distinguish itself from the numerous works that more or less have told and experienced similar scenarios and reflected on the same Hamletic issues.

What works least is precisely what the film should stand on, the bearing columns of the story, that are the characters and the social and physical dynamics that evolve in and between them.

The characters are characterized in a very superficial way, with two or three traits often quite extreme and radical, completely polarizing the different characters and behaviors. This makes them little more than archetypes, even if instead they should indicate the most human and pure instincts, towards which it is difficult to empathize, even those who demonstrate the most morally positive traits. Indeed most are irritating caricatures.

While the dynamics that form and evolve in and between them are extremely banal and predictable as well as different narrative implications that in the last part turns out to be even ridiculous.