Upamanyu Biswas
The Swedish action comedy ‘Trouble’ revolves around Conny, a divorced salesman who is caught in a mix-up during a TV installation at a customer’s home. His life is subsequently upended when he is imprisoned under a false murder charge, which connects with a much larger conspiracy. Desperate to prove his innocence, Conny concocts a Hail Mary plan from inside the prison, hoping to find the real perpetrator and clear his name. However, his efforts are further complicated when he runs into two ruthless criminals who are conjuring their own schemes and require Conny’s help.
By the end of the Jon Holmberg directorial, Conny’s plans take various twists and turns, leaving him with very few options as the walls start closing in. With the aid of a sympathetic police officer, who herself is being hunted down, Conny and his new companion struggle to find a way to make the real perpetrator pay for their crimes. Eventually, a massive showdown takes place at a luxurious hotel where everything comes to a head simultaneously. The final moments mirror the rest of the movie as Conny’s efforts to unsully his name take another twist, one that he might not be able to circumvent! SPOILERS AHEAD.
Trouble Plot Synopsis
Conny is a salesperson at an Elgiganten store, where he makes enough money to pass his days in obscurity. During his free hours, the protagonist plays flight simulation games on his desktop and babysits his daughter a few days a week. She lives with her mother, Ayla, Conny’s ex-wife, who is now married to her pilot husband, Tomas. While they live in comfort, Conny is struggling to make ends meet and be a good father to his daughter. Aiming to get horse riding lessons for his daughter, Conny decides to work overtime at the electronics store. A woman named Diana stops by the shop and gets acquainted with Conny the same day. He begins his overtime tasks at night by handling a TV installation at a customer’s home.
While installing the TV, Conny is left alone in the house by its host, Mirjam. Moments later, Mirjam’s husband, Luka, arrives at the house short of breath and panicking. Earlier, Luka recorded footage of a hooded figure stealing a bunch of drugs in a car parking lot, but the person found out. They enter the house, and a fight breaks out between Luka and the masked assailant. Unaware of the scuffle because of his noise-cancellation headphones, Conny is stunned when he later finds Luka’s mortally wounded body lying near the front entrance. Before he can save him, the protagonist is knocked out by the attacker and made to take the fall for Luka’s murder. He is incarcerated and slowly acclimatizes to prison life while trying to prove his innocence in the matter.
A few days into his prison stint, Conny discovers a hidden tunnel in the prison’s laundry room. After eavesdropping a brief conversation between two criminals, Norinder and Musse, Conny learns that the tunnel is a hidden entrance in and out of the complex. He has a brief reunion with his lawyer, Hasse, who reveals to Conny that his appeal was rejected. Tired of the constant injustices, Conny sneaks out of the prison through the tunnel and meets up with Mirjam, Luka’s wife, hoping to convince her of his innocence and find Luka’s phone, which had the recording in it. Although hesitant at first, Mirjam decides to help Conny find the phone, which she later discovers inside a light fixture. While watching the video, she learns that the real killer was none other than the police officer who headed Conny’s arrest, Helena Malm.
Trouble Ending: Why Was Hasse Working With Helena? Do They Get Arrested?
In the end, Helena’s plans to frame Conny in the murder of Luka become more complicated when the protagonist and Diana learn that Hasse, Conny’s lawyer, is actually in cahoots with the mastermind woman. Throughout the narrative, Conny believes that Hasse is the only one in his corner, even though the attorney feigns skepticism about Conny’s innocence in the murder. Believing that Hasse will listen to him if he shows him the evidence, Conny and Diana take the TV the former installed in Mirjam’s house to the hotel where he is staying. As the recording of Helena’s illicit drug bust is stored on the TV, it is crucial in proving Conny’s innocence. It all ends up being futile when Conny realizes that Hasse and Helena have been scuppering his chances of freedom together.
According to the story, this was Helena and Hasse’s modus operandi: the corrupt police detective makes illicit drug busts for her personal gain and locks up innocent people by framing them somehow. Meanwhile, Hasse comes in to clean up her dirty acts through the judicial channels. They work as a team to support each other in their selfish agendas and run a criminal operation under the guise of authority. It is a hugely profitable syndicate that goes under the radar of real law enforcement. Additionally, as Helena is high up in the police force, she can use the resources of her office to help her get an edge over everyone else. She only starts panicking when Conny flees from prison and collects the drug bust recording taken by Luka.
At the same time, Hasse is doing his best to keep Conny locked up in prison. As his lawyer, he can moonlight as Conny’s attorney while working against him simultaneously. In fact, Conny only realizes much later that Hasse’s appointment as his representative was not a coincidence but a mastermind move by Helena to ensure he did not slip through the cracks. The two antagonists’ tag-team operation is geared towards their personal schemes and running a dirty outfit from within. Even during the final conclusion, Conny and Diana witness them negotiating a drug deal with unknown members of the underworld at the Rux Hotel. The drugs they sell are the same ones Helena stole from the Bamboo Bamboo cocaine drug bust at the beginning of the film.
After a series of unforeseen situations in the hotel, including the destruction of the TV, Conny and Diana manage to call the police and arrest the drug dealers. However, they themselves get cornered during the process. Conny chases down Hasse, who desperately tries to flee with the money he obtained from the deal. Their confrontation begins with Conny having the upper hand but soon passes over to Hasse when he finds a gun tucked away in Conny’s socks. Just as it seems Hasse is about to get away, a number of police officers take him down and arrest him. When Conny hurries upstairs to gauge the situation with Diana, he is alarmed to witness her in the custody of Helena. Conny picks up the damaged TV and heads downstairs, plugging into the hotel’s servers and playing the recording. Helena is subsequently apprehended.
What Does Conny Do With the Drug Money?
Following Conny’s confrontation with Hasse and the latter’s subsequent arrest, the protagonist finds himself in a strange spot as the drug money from the deal is left in his possession. Unsure what to do with it, Conny takes it with him and navigates the halls of the hotel, trying to find his way back to the top. On his circuit, the protagonist runs into Musse, who is injured after an altercation with the police. He had previously shown up at the hotel, and shotgun blasted the TV, which was pivotal to the investigation. Without stopping to talk to Musse, who is still enraged with Conny, the protagonist throws him the bag of drug money and says that he and Musse are now even. Although it is an unprecedented move on Conny’s part, it’s something the protagonist believes is right to balance the scales of justice.
During his prison stint, Norinder and Musse were good friends with Conny. They enabled him to sneak out of the prison and obtain a cell phone, albeit in secrecy. Although they, too, had their personal schemes and needed Conny’s skills to achieve them, they ultimately considered him a brother in arms. That trust, unfortunately, cost them as Norinder was arrested at the airport while chasing down a fleeing Conny. Throughout the narrative, the protagonist uses Norinder and Musse as a means to achieve his own goals. Knowing that he had cost Norinder his freedom and Musse had been left alone, he probably felt guilty about his betrayal. Therefore, the decision to hand over the drug money to Musse was a way to pay off his dues and clear his conscience.
Do Conny and Diana End Up Together?
The final showdown at the Rux Hotel ends with Diana being freed from captivity while Conny is sent back to prison. The two share a triumphant glance with one another as they head off in their separate ways. However, this separation is short-lived, as Helena is now the one irrefutably tied to Luka’s death. Thus, it only takes a short time before Conny regains his freedom, which he decides to enjoy by meeting his daughter, Julia, on the back of a horse. After father and daughter have a moment to reconnect, Julia wanders off to play with her peers. Meanwhile, Diana strolls in and sits down beside Conny. The two seem comfortable in each other’s presence, even sharing a bit of flirtatious banter. The moment nearly ends with them kissing but is interrupted by an angry parent who berates Conny for riding a horse recklessly.
Although the film does not confirm the future of Conny and Diana’s blossoming romance, enough clues are provided to hazard a guess that the pair start a relationship not long after the movie’s final scene. From the get-go, they have hints of chemistry and a spark in their exchanges. Their attraction and liking for one another grew even more when they began working with each other while being on the run from the authorities. Furthermore, Diana is one of the only people who continues to voice feelings of discontent over the fact that Conny might have killed Luka. Her hesitation showcases that she probably understood him at a deeper level and saw him for who he was. In fact, Diana’s hesitation and inner doubts cause her to pursue the truth no matter what, eventually even saving Conny from death multiple times.
Without her presence, the protagonist’s journey would have ended far sooner than it did. He also saw her in a special light, particularly given how lonely he had been following his divorce. Therefore, their mutual bond is built out of the struggles they endured together as a team and the belief they had in one another during tough times. Whether their relationship really comes to fruition or not may be the territory of a sequel.
Read More: Trouble: Is the Netflix Movie Based on a True Story?
