TROUBLE

Sweden, 2024, 89 minutes, Colour.

Filip Berg, Amy Deasismont, Eva Melander, Mans Nathanaelson.

Directed by Jon Holmberg.

If you are feeling in a good mood feeling light-hearted, you will probably enjoy this zany film, a remake of a 1988 Swedish film.

There is a great deal of plot and some audiences have watched it for the action, missing a lot of the zaniness, a film of a comedy of errors and surprises. So often, the plot is going in one direction and, certainly, it veers in quite a different direction.

The focus is on a simple, good man, Conny, divorced with his wife marrying a pilot, but devoted to his daughter. He is an electronics expert, giving some good help to a police officer in the shop, then going to in house to install a television set. Already, the audience has seen a drug set up, an ambush by masked attackers – and all this filmed on the phone by the husband of the woman who has employed Conny to work on the television.

Then the comic touch begins, the man returning home, Conny diligent at work with his headphones on, the murderer coming, blood and the screwdriver, Conny oblivious. But, of course, he picks up the screwdriver, blood on him, and the plausible arrest for his being in the house for burglary.

He is very quickly in prison, sentenced to 18 years, working in the laundry where, more zaniness, there is a huge tunnel for some top criminals to escape – but, one of them is certainly not the brightest, and the other enjoys his control. Conny uses the tunnel to try to prove his innocence, but the two convicts, seeing the photo of his wife with her new husband, an airline pilot, assume that Conny is a pilot, the plan where they will escape, go to an airport and meet an accomplice with the money, and Conny will fly them to safety!

And, of course, more zany episodes, the drive through the city, the errors of the prisoners and their being arrested on the plane! With the help of the police officer who Conny helped with the computer advice, they continue to try to prove his innocence.

The clue for the murderer according to the victim’s wife is the phone. She has hidden the phone in the roof of her house, and, when they look at the footage, the discovery is that the chief of police is the culprit, organising the drug ambush. In the meantime, Conny had been appointed a lawyer who is all talk and no action, then revealed to be an accomplice, but easily giving up information.

In the confrontation, the police chief shoots and wounds Conny. In hospital, she comes to track him down, but the nice police officer is there, and more zaniness – the chief wounding herself with her own gun, planting it on the young officer, the shooting of a guard adding  to the guilt of the young officer.

The chief has also destroyed the television set where they had played the phone footage – but, Conny with his electronic expertise knows that the basic footage has been retained and it is set up to play it in the elevator, the horror of the police chief watching it.

Happy ending, of course, Conny’s daughter wanting a horse and Conny getting her one, trying to ride it, falling off… But, the nice possibility of Conny and the young police officer and the future…

If you enjoyed watching the film, a recommendation is to Google a review which takes the reader through all the details of the plot to quickly enjoy it again: Sutamba Bannerjee in fugtives.com