"Tatort" Fakten, Fakten (2002)

User Rating:

7.6/10   

Director:

Susanne Zanke

Writer:

Wolfgang Panzer (writer)

TV Series:

"Tatort" (1970)

Original Air Date:

1 December 2002 (Season 1, Episode 517)

Genre:

Crime | Drama

Plot:

Plot Keywords:

Adultery | Domestic Violence | Murder | University | Infidelity

Cast

Axel Prahl	...	Hauptkommissar Frank Thiel
Jan Josef Liefers	...	Professor Karl-Friedrich Boerne
Friederike Kempter	...	Nadeshda Krusenstern
Christine Urspruch	...	Silke Haller, genannt 'Alberich'
April Hailer	...	Agatha Dreiden
Oliver Bokern	...	Bernd Bulle
Oliver Stritzel	...	Prof. Bernhard Dreiden
Mechthild Grossmann	...	Staatsanwältin Wilhelmine Klemm
Vasiliki Kanakis-Roussi	...	Juliane Kraft (as Vasiliki Roussi)
Michael Schiller	...	Felix Kraft
Gudrun Ritter	...	Großmutter Kraft
Gertrud Roll	...	Großmutter Retzlaff
Thomas Kylau
Thomas Goritzki
Claus Dieter Clausnitzer	...	Herbert Thiel (as Claus D. Clausnitzer)

Runtime:

Germany:87 min

Country:

Germany

Language:

German

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Filming Locations:

Münster, North Rhine - Westphalia, Germany

Company:

Colonia Media

Starts off weak but picks up impact...

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

This 'Tatort' starts of rather weakly and cliched. A friend of Prof. Boerne is the only suspect in a murder case and Boerne works hard and talks an awful lot of standard lines in trying to convince Kommissar Thiel to look for other leads.

What looks like boring standard fare at first sight suddenly takes a turn into a world of domestic violence you wouldn't want to imagine. It almost seems as if the producers exchanged the director after not being satisfied with the first half of the movie. While in the beginning most lines come off as bad acting from an unimaginative script, Axel Prahl and Jan Josef Liefers (who play Thiel and Boerne, respectively) suddenly create a lot of great chemistry out of nowhere and treat the case with more and more dedication and emergence as they uncover a terrible family secret out of the unfathomed depths of possible human behavior.

(Spoilers in this paragraph!) Try to stay with this one through the first half and you will be rewarded. If you can't do that - imagine a blend of "Misery (1990)" with a variation of "Psycho (1960)" where Bates' mother is actually still alive (but is not interested in showers) and you get a vague idea of what you're missing.