“An entertaining and visually lush film that never truly surprises.”

After winning the Camera d’Or prize for Best Debut in Cannes in 2003 for his film Reconstruction, Christoffer Boe never really made good on that promise, with his later films rarely showing up on the festival circuit, and most of his work being confined to his home market of Denmark. That doesn’t mean Boe isn’t a very accomplished filmmaker, something he proves with his latest, the 1920s-set crime thriller Special Unit: The First Murder. Confined within the genre’s tropes of red herrings, femmes fatales, and predictable plots, Boe manages to craft an entertaining and visually lush film that never truly surprises but is a good two hours spent. It is sadly not a true return to the level of his debut, and destined to end up on a streamer even if it will probably do good box office on home turf.

In 1927 the Danish police establishes a special unit to investigate suspicious arson cases believed to be ploys to fleece insurance companies. A two-man team consisting of the young and ambitious Otto Himmelstrup (Alex Høgh Andersen) and his trustworthy older partner PR (Nicolaj Kopernikus) – accompanied by a secretary eager for a career as an investigator herself (Camilla, played by Mathilde Arcel) – tackle their first case in Esbjerg, where they are to look into the mystery of a burnt-out summer house. The fiery foul play becomes a murder case when they discover a blackened body amid the rubble, which leads them into a web of sexual games in Esbjerg’s upper echelons, its spider a powerful female industrialist (Katrine Greis-Rosenthal). As the tenacious Himmelstrup is determined to catch the killer and lay the town’s corruption bare, he ends up putting the overzealous Camilla in danger.

Special Unit: The First Murder certainly doesn’t shy away from genre clichés in this story about the inception of what is labeled the ‘Danish FBI’. Boe’s twist that makes it interesting is the period setting, which allows him to present standard investigative techniques as something novel for the time, and Himmelstrup’s unit as a CSI avant la lettre. Lavish production design and plenty of noirish cinematography courtesy of DoP Lasse Frank give the film a sumptuous look, with at times erotic undertones, although Boe doesn’t press too much even when the goings-on of Esbjerg’s upper crust become more sordid. A solid cast led by a sharp-jawed Høgh Andersen, whose character is fighting demons from a traumatic past, finds a standout in Mathilde Arcel. Perhaps it’s the character, equal parts ambition and smarts, and not willing to let the men lord over her, or perhaps it’s Arcel’s on-screen charisma, but the actress runs away with the film and takes center stage in the story’s most thrilling sequence when Camilla is given her own mission.

Entertaining and with enough twists and turns to let the more familiar genre beats go by without much groaning, Special Unit is not a film that will set the world on fire (pun intended) or re-establish Boe as a name to watch; it is too pulpy to make a lasting impression, and while Boe’s style is distinct and in-your-face, it is also a bit too polished to give the film real arthouse appeal. That makes it fall somewhere in the middle when it comes to an intended audience, but those who want to pass a couple of hours watching an airport thriller in cinematic form can hardly go wrong with this film.