Trouble Review – Wild Ride That Leaves the Laughs Behind
Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
This was super chaotic in the first few seconds! It opens with the police trying to bust a drug deal, and even though they apprehend some criminals, the drugs are missing from the scene. The protagonist, Conny, has nothing to do with drugs or thugs. He is a divorced salesman who is in the wrong place at the wrong time and gets sentenced to 18 years in jail for a murder he didn’t commit, connected to the drug racket.
Directed by Jon Holmberg, the 2024 Swedish action-comedy Trouble (original title: Strul) stars Filip Berg as Conny, who finds a way to escape from prison and track down the real killer behind the murder for which he is incarcerated. Since this is supposed to be a crime-comedy, the practicality and logic of many things are simply ignored. For instance, there’s a scene where a character finds a phone that has been missing for days and puts it on charge, and the moment it switches on, the phone automatically pairs with a device and starts to display photos, even though the owner never had the chance to pair it with the device.
Amy Deasismont plays Diana, a young, ambitious cop who is the only person to consider the possibility that Conny could be innocent and tries to investigate the case from other angles. Luckily for Conny, he is able to get Diana on his side in the second half of Trouble, and the two work together to expose the real killer. Filip Berg and Amy Deasismont are amusing as an onscreen pair, but their team-up happens too late in the story.
Although a lot of ridiculous things happen throughout the movie—like Conny being mistaken for someone he isn’t by fellow prisoners and getting dragged into a wild escape plan—it’s not as comedic and has very few laugh-worthy moments. Besides, there’s something about Filip Berg’s portrayal of Conny that just feels off; in some scenes, he looks spaced out, as if Conny is supposed to either have a drug problem or some cognitive challenges. As far as the action is concerned, there are almost no combat scenes, just some shootout sequences and violent struggles that aren’t particularly entertaining.
With a 1 hour and 38-minute runtime, the biggest strength of Trouble is that it establishes in the very first few minutes that Conny is a nice, hard-working, single dad who isn’t capable of murder. This manages to keep viewers engaged until the end, wondering how Conny will prove his innocence. He is a character you’d root for, even though a lot of things happening around him are not as exciting.
Rating: 5 on 10. You can watch ‘Trouble’ on Netflix.
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