Entrapped

As someone who really enjoyed Trapped, I was looking forward to this. Sadly, it is not as gripping a tale. Even the Icelandic landscape and weather seemed less fascinating and forbidding. Trapped involved lots of artic ice and blizzards, whereas this is set mostly in a biker gang's hideout and a pagan cult's compound. There's lots of back and forth between the two on a coastal highway. Bikers and police, back and forth, back and forth. Every time a new issue came up, there was a road trip to one or the other.

The show attempts the obligatory task of making every character seem like a potential suspect for at least five minutes, but not all of these attempts succeeded. Without giving any details away, I didn't find the resolution very satisfying or worth the time I had invested.

I expected something as fine as "Trapped" but was disappointed, as it seems as are others.

The basic fault is a script that can't seem to raise above grade B theatrics. The cops continue to act stupidly. The bad guys are "Sons Of Anarchy" on Ritalin. The main character bumbles around like Gentle Ben. No-one comes across as real, merely caricatures, and the dialog is stilted.

It's all been done before but with a hackneyed plot line it helps to have a better script, and character development.

It all shows in the acting, which simply follows the dialog faithfully rather than striking out and creating some risk.

We do not need another sequel. Let this one lie.

Well, it should be Trapped and Season 3, but someone somewhere decided that "a new start" would attract fresh audience? The number of episodes is also smaller (6 vs. 8), but on the ground of the story here, it could have been easily 5... Everything is slower, the star Ólafur Darri Ólafsson spends less time on screen, and the inclusion of otherwise great Danish actor Thomas Bo Larsen did not provide much value, as his character has a few dimensions only... The beautiful nature of Iceland is yet visible, but the distress and dreariness are more or less gone or in the far background.

Still 7 points from me as I was unable to surmise the wrongdoer and the reasons behind the crime was a nice twist.

It's a police procedural that is actually a six-episode third season of "Trapped" that I reviewed a little while back. It remains set in Reykjavík and more remote areas of Iceland. It follows two police detectives and a local police chief as they solve three murders, one of which occurred seven years earlier.

Andri Ólafsson (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson), the older detective, and Hinrika (Ilmur Kristjánsdóttir) remain the core of the story. Trausti (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson) is another detective from the earlier series who had conflicts with Andri, but now they're working together. Andri gets pulled into a crime from his past that seems related to current crimes in his old town.

The plot involves a group living communally and engaging in nature worship and a local motorcycle gang that joins a Danish motorcycle gang involved in drug smuggling. There are family relationships between the two groups and conflicting claims on the land's ownership.

This season, we learn much more about Andri's background and the murder case that he botched years earlier. His suspect in the earlier case has now been murdered, and both murders seem linked to the current commune-motorcycle gang conflict. By the end of the series, Andri faces a full reckoning for his actions while he and Hinrika also solve the current crimes.

It was good to get more depth on Andri's background, though some of the complexities of the commune/motorcycle gang storylines were a bit complex for a short series. The series also introduced some new characters who begged for further elaboration. Still, it's a worthy successor to "Trapped."

Summary:

Entrapped (it is actually season 3 of Trapped) continues to expose the foreign as a threat to island peace and family conflicts as axes of the behavior of its characters, although without the almost Bergmanian depth of season 2. A more conventional crime series , but with all the ingredients to retain the viewer and always with the spectacular and decisive setting of the Icelandic landscape.

Review:

The murder of a young member of a neopagan sect coincides with the arrival in the Icelandic town of Siglufiörður of a gang of bikers willing to dispute the lands occupied by the sect.

The series (effectively a season 3 of Trapped, renamed Entrapped) finds Hinrika (Ilmur Kristjánsdóttir) as the new police chief of the northern Icelandic town and Andri (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) and Trausti (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson) serving as in Reykjavik. The murder case will intersect with others, one of them related to the suspected bikers, which will generate tensions, interference and dilemmas in the respective investigations.

Entrapped recovers in this season a narrative that is generally simpler (although sometimes it is a bit difficult to retain the names of the characters), mostly linear, far from the almost Bergmanian depth and complexity of season 2, but mostly effective. Family conflicts always appear as underlying and in general determinants of the plot and foreign characters as disturbing elements of the island's peace. Although the series (quite short and with chapters of around 40 minutes) continues to take its time, the story knows how to change the rhythm with several scenes of suspense and action, always with the wonderful Icelandic landscape as the determining setting.