The Rats: A Witcher Tale

The Weight of Scavenged Gold

There is always something a little suspicious about a movie a streaming service drops with no ceremony, late at night, as if it hopes you won't look too closely. *The Rats: A Witcher Tale* landed on Netflix last October with almost no noise, strapped to the launch of the flagship show's fourth season like extra luggage. It began life as a six-episode miniseries. After a reportedly messy shoot in South Africa, what we got instead was an 82-minute heist movie. You feel the missing chunks everywhere. Scenes lurch forward, the world-building arrives like blunt force, and the tone swerves hard enough to give you a headache. More than once I wondered whether I was watching grimdark fantasy or a feral teen caper. Still, for all the seams showing, I kept leaning closer.



Mairzee Almas has the unenviable task of making the Continent's most irritating young outlaws worth caring about before they ever intersect with Ciri. Mistle, Giselher, and the rest of the gang arrive caked in dirt and planning to rob a vicious gladiatorial arena. The ensemble is a bit unwieldy, so the movie smartly narrows most of its feeling around Mistle. Christelle Elwin does the heavy lifting. She doesn't play Mistle as a swaggering rogue so much as a trapped animal pretending not to shake. In those early tavern scenes, her shoulders stay lifted as if she's waiting for the next blow before it lands. Elwin gives the character a live-wire grief, all of it rooted in the memory of Juniper, the murdered handmaiden and lover she cannot stop carrying with her.



The strangest pleasure in the film—and I still can't quite believe I'm saying this—is Dolph Lundgren. He plays Brehen, a disgraced, alcoholic Witcher the kids hire to deal with the arena's monster. After decades of indestructible action-guy roles, his fragility here has real weight. He doesn't try to dominate the frame. He folds into it, hunching over his drink, staring at the floor, making that huge body look used up. When he finally draws his sword, the moment doesn't read as triumph. It reads as labor. Bitter, exhausting labor.



Then the catacombs arrive, and the movie's hacked-apart structure weirdly starts helping. The Rats crack the vault only to find that the creature guarding the gold is the mutilated, mutated remains of Mistle's lost Juniper. Almas shoots the fight close and ugly, leaning on torchlight, shadows, mud, and panic instead of clean choreography. You do not get elegant coverage. You get flashes: a lunge, a splash, Elwin's face collapsing as she realizes what she has to kill. It's a nasty scene in the best and worst sense. Turning a standard heist reveal into a slaughterhouse has a mean little charge to it. Maybe the film hasn't really earned that much misery. I'm not sure it has. But the heavy, ugly thud of Lundgren hitting the stone floor after Leo Bonhart reaches him—Sharlto Copley chewing scenery right down to bedrock—has stayed with me. It's a badly bruised detour for this franchise, no doubt. Still, there is a pulse under all that scavenged armor.