Arne Dahl: Europa Blues (2012) User Reviews (5)

The real Dahl

[Lejink · 8/10 · 27 July 2013]

I have thoroughly enjoyed the whole series of Arne Dahl, the Swedish crime show following the lives and case files of a select team of specially selected policemen and women, under the stewardship of their firm-but-fair female supremo. This final double-episode was well up to the high standard, with another multi-levelled story which started out as an apparent Anti-Semitic race-crime (when in fact, it's anything but, as events pan out), and goes onto an almost picaresque escape by a group of young Ukrainian women, previously trafficked and raped into submission and captivity in Sweden by their captors, which sadly ends bloodily and crucially an Italian-based elderly organised-crime kingpin.

Along the way, there are the usual sub-story slices of the lives of the team members, unobtrusively adding to the depth of characterisation, as Hjelm's marriage reaches a crisis, (the crux reached in a particularly well-written scene tellingly involving only minimal dialogue), Chavez and his new wife can't agree on having children, Gunnar finds a new and very responsive girl-friend, Kerstin seeks custody of her recently rediscovered infant son and Norlander finds he's going to be a father again. Of these sub-plots involving the team-members, it was good to at last see boss Hultin and quiet family man Soderstedt get some focus on their emotions, the former having to cope with being told to lose three members of the team due to budget constraints and the latter with a pushy wife trying to make him blow a surprise inheritance on a country lodge. As ever the plot strands are brought tightly together even if Big Coincidence plays its usual Big Part, with Soderstedt rediscovering his flair for dogged detective work but placing himself in extraordinary danger as he gets in the hair of the Mafioso-type overlord, to be saved at the last minute in a brutally exciting finale by the efforts of two zealous young sisters out to revenge their murdered and dispossessed father. As for Hultin's dilemma, this only adds further piquancy to this last-in-series episode, with seemingly all her team having reasons to exit the group, although unsurprisingly, this is left open at the end. A good thing too as I've really grown to enjoy getting to know all the members and their foibles and really hope they reassemble in the future for another series of what has been an excellently written, produced and acted show.

Okay, but still not up to Wallander or Falk, for example

[BeneCumb · 7/10 · 2 July 2013]

Having seen all the films in chronological order, it is here becoming to assess the whole series (10 episodes).

After seeing the first 2 episodes, I was ambivalent toward them: well, I had my pleasant joy of recognition due to actors from my country (although playing negative characters), most members of the special team seemed uninviting to me (compared to e.g. Wallander or Ørnen series), and the course of events was somewhat dazed and with scenes not providing additional value to the film. Nevertheless, I decided to continue watching and the following ones got more onto the track. Of course, there are topics characteristic to Swedish contemporary film-making such as cross-border crime, immigrant issues and child molestation, but their angle of depiction was not annoying.

As for cast, it was pleasant that local actors speaking local languages were used when events took place in a foreign country; most inviting main actors to me were Matias Varela as Jorge Chaves and Niklas Åkerfelt as Arto Söderstedt.

I would collate Arne Dahl series with Anna Pihl series: both not bad, but not in my Top10 Scandinavian crime series list.

Too Contrived

[crumpytv · 7/10 · 30 July 2020]

I have enjoyed this series of Arne Dahl, but like in this episode, the personal relationships just got in the way of some good stories. Characters circumstances changed to fit story lines and their behaviour also. This was a complicated story with some huge holes in the plot and continuity. More time should have been spent on the main plots and getting them right and less on the A Unit character' private lives.

The final case for the A Unit?

[Tweekums · 9/10 · 9 June 2013]

As the fifth and final story featuring Stockholm Police's A Unit opens we see an elderly man at a family party; shortly after he leaves the action cuts to a train where a group of neo-Nazis are acting in an intimidating fashion. When they leave the train they go to a nearby Jewish cemetery and start desecrating the graves. Not long afterwards the old man turns up and is murdered by an unknown assailant. The team are soon on the case although some of them have other things on their minds; Unit boss Jenny Hultin has been told she must reduce the squad's size by three members due to budget cuts, Kerstin is attempting to regain custody of her son and Aarto is finding a large unexpected inheritance to be bringing more trouble than happiness. There is soon a second murder; this time a body has been found in the wolverine enclosure at the local zoo. Initially the cases seem unlinked but phone records link the second dead man and a phone found at the scene of the first killings to a group of Russian women who fled from hotel that was doubling as a brothel.

This was a typically instalment with a good mix of humorous moments with some very bleak scenes; the conclusion to the first episode was particularly shocking. Inevitably the resolution involved some unlikely coincidences but it was none the less enjoyable for that. There are plenty of tense moments; it even looks as if one of the team is going to die at one point. There are also some shocking revelations concerning three Nazi doctors who experimented of Jewish prisoners during the war; viewers will probably guess one of them; two if they are more astute than me but the third is likely to surprise most viewers. As with previous instalments of the series there are some disturbingly violent scenes although if you've enjoyed the other stories there is nothing worse in this one. If this is the last outing for the team I think it ended on a high although I'm sure I'm not the only person who hopes more stories are made at some point.

Too many things don't add up

[altereggo123 · 3/10 · 22 August 2019]

I've enjoyed aspects of this series and I love Scandinavian police procedurals, but as I watched this episode I felt it made no sense.

Reina, a sex-trafficking victim, seems to be in her twenties or so. Her father was tortured and maimed by Nazis in a concentration camp in WWII. Even if this happened to him when he was a child, he would have had to father her rather late in life for her to be so young. If she was born in the 1990s, he would have been in his fifties or sixties. Though she had a somewhat older sister, to whom she seemed close. So he survives the war and then, 40 to 50 years later, has two daughters, separated by a decade or so? Um... sure. I think there is a generation missing here. It should have been her grandfather who was tortured by Nazis as a child and her great grandfather, not her grandfather, who was killed in the camps during the war.

Then there are the ridiculous coincidences. Reina is a victim of sex trafficking. And it just so happens that the leader of the Ukrainian sex trafficking ring is one of the same mad scientists who tortured her father, now living under a new identity as an Italian organized crime figure. Nope, not buying it. And then the detective who unravels it turns out to be a the great nephew of another doctor who worked in the same concentration camp laboratory. Seriously? That's three coincidental connections to the same war crime, all coming together in this episode.

If I've gotten something wrong, feel free to let me know and I'll correct this review. Overall, notwithstanding the lovely scenery, this was a pretty improbable and poorly conceived episode.