Thumbs up for Elmar Wepper, Ulrich Noethen and Ronald Zehrfeld in this one. Pretty much all the aspects, especially writing and direction from this movie are mediocre only, but this trio made it a very watchable quality movie, especially for television. It is a three-year-old film that runs for roughly 105 minutes and is directed by Dominik Graf, one of Germany's most experienced directors and a multiple Adolf Grimme Award winner. Last year he had "Die geliebten Schwestern" out, a weak film that, for some strange reason got submitted to the Academy in the Foreign Language Film category. Needless to say, it did not even make the shortlist.
The script is not particularly interesting unfortunately. It's another story about a mentally unbalanced cop, who was disciplinary transferred (allegedly). This one here allegedly has a pedophile tendency, which obviously proves wrong as the film goes on. Then there are the usual high society references, corrupt cops who forced (wrongful) confessions and the core story is about trafficking of young woman, a topic that has been dealt with so many times already as well and frequently in a more convincing manner. And there are a couple weird scenes which not even the best actor could save, like the fight between Zehrfeld's character and the female cop who was supposed to control his actions. The ending was nicely done, except that final shot where a character speaks to the audience again. Graf seems to love these. He also uses them in other films, such as the one I mentioned earlier, but I think they are truly bad most of the time. All in all, it's not a bad movie by any means, but could have been better. The filmmakers really need to thank the cast here for taking it to another level. Recommended.
The script is not particularly interesting unfortunately. It's another story about a mentally unbalanced cop, who was disciplinary transferred (allegedly). This one here allegedly has a pedophile tendency, which obviously proves wrong as the film goes on. Then there are the usual high society references, corrupt cops who forced (wrongful) confessions and the core story is about trafficking of young woman, a topic that has been dealt with so many times already as well and frequently in a more convincing manner. And there are a couple weird scenes which not even the best actor could save, like the fight between Zehrfeld's character and the female cop who was supposed to control his actions. The ending was nicely done, except that final shot where a character speaks to the audience again. Graf seems to love these. He also uses them in other films, such as the one I mentioned earlier, but I think they are truly bad most of the time. All in all, it's not a bad movie by any means, but could have been better. The filmmakers really need to thank the cast here for taking it to another level. Recommended.
