Rats!

Rats!

A young graffiti artist in the thick of police action! It’s total mayhem that is a blast to watch

It’s 2007. Raphael is a sensitive kid from a shithole called Fresno, Texas. His hobby is tagging buildings, fences and just about anything that can be written on. This passion for graffiti will become his curse. One day, while scribbling on a rundown pay phone box, he gets arrested by Officer Williams: a local cop-turned-psychopath who believes she’s starring in a heavyweight thriller movie. Raphael is looking at doing community service and… an extensive undercover action. In order to make amends, he has to spy on his drug-dealing cousin for the police, cope with being under constant surveillance of FBI agents squeezed in a van like sardines in a tin, and, what is more, Raphael has just fallen in love. Will he manage not to go nuts in this utter mayhem?

“Rats!” is a black comedy that refers to B-grade cinema: action films, thrillers with blasé detectives in the leading roles, low-budget horror films, and, most of all, it pokes fun at today’s America. There is a local beauty dreaming of making a name for herself on television and a clerk who keeps a shotgun under the counter and dreams of using it. There is plenty of absurdity and some surprisingly well-realised combat scenes. “Rats!”, just like Raphael’s life, is an absolute mayhem, which, however, is a lot of fun to watch thanks to a clever script. The duo Carl Fry and Maxwell Nalevansky are responsible for writing and directing it. This is their collaborative feature debut, which won them the Audience Award at the Fantasia Film Festival.