$100 Million Rat

Film Review

Written by Kineograph

A rat swallows a diamond worth $100 million — and a white-haired villainess answers the way only a cartoon tyrant can: she sends an entire army to hunt it down.

“One Rat! An Entire Army Against A Rat!”

It opens at full throttle: a man in a white suit standing in a buggy, firing a pistol into the air, leading a convoy of motorcycles and trucks across the desert. The hunt is on before we know what is being hunted. Then the film introduces its true engine — the villainess, white-haired, a tear or mark on her cheek — and lets her do the maths out loud for her own army: “One rat! … my diamond! $100 million. One rat! An entire army against a rat.” She gives a commander twenty-four hours: “Bring me my diamond. Or you will join him.”

That disproportion is the joke and the film knows it. The rat itself, when we see it in the foreground with its pursuer looming behind, is just a rat — small, ordinary, and in possession of the one thing in the world this woman cannot buy back with an army. Everything funny and everything excessive in the film flows from that single image.

The Chase Is The Film

From there it is pursuit, staged big: a silhouetted rider on horseback down a dusty cobbled street while soldiers and civilians scatter, the cry of “Run! … My diamond! Stop that rat!” carrying over it. There is barely a quiet second in the middle of this film, and the scale keeps escalating — from a convoy, to a manhunt, to a whole city held responsible for one animal’s hiding place. As pure forward motion, it works. The film wants to feel enormous, and for long stretches it does.

Best Scene (~2:40)

The Predator Shows Mercy

The best idea in the film arrives near the end, and it is not the army’s. A starving predator — a cat-like creature — corners the rat, and lets it go: “I hate rats, and I am starving, but I hate humans more. They don’t get to win, not even over you. You’re free to go.” It is a genuinely good beat: the one character with every reason to eat the rat is the one who understands the hunt. The film’s last true image is the rat holding the great blue diamond — and then the other rats deliver the punchline the whole chase has been building toward: “How are we supposed to eat that? … It’s just a diamond!”

And there the film stops. The diamond is never recovered on screen, the villainess’s fate is never shown, and the hunt simply ends unresolved. For a cartoon this size, the shrug of an ending is almost in character — but it is a shrug, and the film is weaker for closing on one.

Loud, Bright — And Wobbling

I have to be honest about the craft, because this is where the film pays for its ambition. The villainess’s face morphs between shots — her eyes, the mark on her cheek, the tear, all shift. The rat changes scale from scene to scene. The diamond itself will not hold a form: the great blue pendant of the close-ups is elsewhere a red crystal. Soldiers’ faces melt toward skulls — effective as menace, but clearly not always by design. Costumes and the convoy are inconsistent, and the dialogue is the biggest casualty of all: much of it is mumbled or garbled, with lip-sync drifting off the words, so the villainess’s speeches land by force of performance rather than clarity. This is heavy slop, and it is the main thing standing between the film and its own premise.

Final Thoughts

$100 Million Rat is a cartoon of glorious disproportion — an army, a city and a fortune mobilised against one small animal — let down by a production that keeps slipping out of its own grip.

I would recommend it to viewers who like their AI shorts big, fast and unbothered by polish: the premise, the ultimatum and the predator’s mercy are all worth four minutes. Just know going in that you will be admiring the scale through a fair amount of wobble.

Scene Breakdown

0:00 — A man in a white suit fires a pistol in the air from a buggy, leading a convoy of motorcycles and trucks across the desert.

~0:40 — The hunt is ordered — “Find it! … until sundown” — and the white-haired woman is introduced in close profile.

~0:40–1:20 — The villainess rages at her army: “One rat! An entire army against a rat.” A commander is given twenty-four hours: “Bring me my diamond. Or you will join him.”

~1:20–2:00 — The chase through the city; a silhouetted rider on horseback down a dusty cobbled street.

~2:40 — Best Scene: the ultimatum to the city — “Your city will be reduced to ashes! To ashes!”

~2:40–3:20 — The starving predator frees the rat: “I hate humans more.” The rat holds the blue diamond in extreme close-up.

~3:20–4:15 — The other rats dismiss the prize: “How are we supposed to eat that? … It’s just a diamond!” The hunt ends unresolved.

An entry in the Higgsfield Global Film Festival. The project’s own one-line summary: “For a rat, there’s no predator worse than a diamond — and this one just swallowed one.”