The Phantom (2000)

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Movie
Original title The Phantom
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2000
length 93 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Dennis Gansel
script Dennis Gansel
Maggie Peren
Bernd Ohm
production Christian Becker
Thomas Häberle
music Rainer Kühn
camera Axel Sand
cut Jochen Retter
occupation

The Phantom is an award-winning TV production of 2000 . The film is a political thriller based on the book Das RAF-Phantom , which stages the widespread conspiracy theory for the assassination attempt on Alfred Herrhausen . The film plays with some flashbacks and original footage of the assassination.

action

Actually it is just a routine observation of the police officer Leo Kramer and his friend and colleague Pit Roth. Out of boredom, people pass the time and sing old songs on the observation tape ( Rio Reiser's King of Germany ). Until something happens, you can delete it again. Then Leo leaves the car to get coffee. Exactly at this point the expected people appear, and when Leo comes back just a minute later, he finds everyone murdered in cold blood, including Pit, who was left in the car.

An investigation begins, but when his boss is murdered and the tape disappears, Leo is now suspected - who, not without good reason, sees himself in mortal danger. Hunted by agents from his agency and by the killers, he has to go on his own to uncover the background. The more he speaks to acquaintances of those under surveillance, the more it becomes clear to him that he has gotten into the middle of a highly criminal state affair of the first order.

The observers suspected of supporting the RAF had been in hiding for many years. Apparently they wanted to go back and uncover some explosive details. Their lawyer shows with flashbacks in recent FRG history that attacks on economic bosses, which the RAF are said to have been carried out, may have been carried out by state organs - that is, state terrorism could have been under the " false flag ".

Leo's investigations, carried out with the support of her legal assistant Anne, make them public enemies of the first order. They have to hurry from one contact to the next, always on their heels with their persecutors, who also don't shy away from murdering other people.

The film ends with Leo's death. He did get to the tape, but the captors just got too close to him: in Belgium he only finds one dead person, and on the return trip he is expected at the border. The little dirt road over which he tries to sneak turns into a mousetrap, and Leo, defenseless, is shot in cold blood and robbed by the two Belgian police officers; but they cannot find the tape with him. And while the camera looks into the face of the dying man, you can see his relaxed grin, which is growing wider: in recuts you can see that Leo sent the tape with the evidence in the mail and like Hans Ganz, the father of the persecuted and murdered Andreas Quite, open the mailbox and find the mailer with the tape inside.

Whether this tape could have relieved him and what the observers said about the background, this now finally seems to become clear. Maybe even heads at the highest levels will roll. The tape is inserted and you can hear Rio Reiser's “King of Germany” again while the camera pulls itself out into the long shot and the film is faded out.

Trivia

Director Dennis Gansel makes a brief appearance as a witness. He plays a raver who, together with his girlfriend, a raver, saw that after the murder of Leo Kramer's superior, a taxi drove away in the underground car park. It was not Leo Kramer who was behind the wheel, but an elderly man. The scene in which Dennis Gansel can be seen includes the testimony of the raver and the raverin at the police station.

Awards

In 2000 the film received the 3sat audience award . In 2001 Dennis Gansel and Jürgen Vogel received the Adolf Grimme Prize and Jürgen Vogel and Nadeshda Brennicke the Audience Award of the Marler Group . Also in 2001, the film was voted the best TV feature film of the year by the readers of Cinema magazine and was awarded the Jupiter . The main actor Jürgen Vogel won the Jupiter in the Best TV Actor category.

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