Countdown on the death bridge

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Episode of the series Alarm für Cobra 11 - Use for Team 2
Original title Countdown on the death bridge
Country of production Germany
original language German
length 92 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
classification Season 1, Episode 1
1st episode overall ( list )
German-language
first broadcast		 April 17, 2003 on RTL
Rod
Director Michael Kreindl , Raoul W. Heimrich
script Dieter Tarnowski
production Roland Hergert , Alexander von Lukowitz
music Nick Reich , Jaro Messerschmidt
cut Daniela Beauvais
occupation

Countdown on the death bridge is the first episode or the pilot film of the action series Alarm für Cobra 11 - Einsatz für Team 2 , a spin-off of Alarm für Cobra 11 - Die Autobahnpolizei . The first broadcast took place on April 17, 2003 on RTL .

action

The brothers Carlo "Kalle" Ludowski and Walter Ludowski plan to detonate a bomb at a rest area. However, Walter gets involved in a pile-up on the autobahn, so that he has to leave the bomb in the jammed car behind him. When Walter reported this to his brother Kalle by phone, Kalle detonated the bomb remotely. In the explosion, the two Cobra 11 commissioners, Chief Detective Semir Gerkhan and Chief Detective Tom Kranich, are injured and incapacitated. Three people are killed. Detective Chief Inspector Frank Traber and Detective Inspector Susanna von Landitz are also involved in the pile-up, both of whom have their first day at the motorway police station . You take over the investigation work for your two injured colleagues.

Kalle Ludowski calls the head of the department Anna Engelhardt and demands 3 million euros, otherwise more bombs would be detonated. In truth, the brothers are already preparing the next attack. Kalle buys various explosives accessories and tells the seller his plan. He wants to blow up a motorway first and then a motorway bridge. His brother Walter believes that he does everything for the money. However, Kalle wants to take revenge on his brother because Kalle has taken on all of the guilt in a money truck robbery that went wrong with two dead guards. While his brother was in prison for 14 years, Walter now has a wife and a daughter. Although Walter only blew up the money transport, Kalle believes that his brother did not deserve this luck. He wants to see him suffer. Therefore, Kalle now blames Walter for the three dead people on the highway and tries to harm him psychologically.

The two brothers plant a bomb in a toad tunnel under the motorway. Walter wants to pick up his daughter and therefore leaves the area with the bomb earlier. When a man happens to come by in his jeep and discovers the bomb, Kalle prevents the latter from calling the police by shooting the man first and then chasing him until he crashes into a quarry in his jeep. The suitcase will be picked up by a motorcyclist when the money is handed over. This drives over the toad tunnel previously prepared by the brothers. Now Kalle detonates the bomb, whereby the pursuers Traber and von Landitz overturn with their car and the motorcycle courier can escape. Kalle shoots him in the parking lot after handing over the suitcase. He prepares the suitcase with an additional paint bomb , so that when Walter opens the suitcase, he believes that the police have tricked them. Meanwhile, Traber and von Landitz find the crashed jeep with the dead witness. The brothers increase their monetary claim due to the paint bomb to 6 million euros. Both place bombs on the pillars of a motorway bridge.

The commissioners find out who sold the explosives to the brothers. However, the seller has already been shot by Kalle. He prepared the body with a bomb, which exploded when von Landitz wanted to examine the body. The commissioners are only slightly injured. Meanwhile, Kalle has organized a school trip for Walter's daughter Stefanie, which takes place on a motorway bridge construction site. Walter's wife Elke takes part in this excursion as a supervisor. When agreeing to hand over the money again, Kalle mentions that he otherwise wants to blow up the Salmtal Bridge, which is under construction. Despite a very short notice, Traber and von Landitz are on the bridge in good time before the ignition. Landitz manages to get the children back on the bus before the bombs explode. Due to the explosion, however, the bus driver loses control and gets stuck on the edge of the bridge, so Landitz has to rescue the children from the bus before it falls into the depths. You can escape from the bridge. Traber and the site manager as well as Stefanie and Elke Ludowski are stuck on the bridge, however, because a hole was blown in the bridge both in front of and behind them.

The brothers agree on a third handover, now they are demanding 12 million euros. When a helicopter approaches the bridge, which is supposed to pick up the trapped people, Kalle blows up another part of the bridge against his brother's wishes, so that the helicopter explodes and crashes. When the SEK tries to defuse the explosive charges at the feet of the pillars, one of these explosive devices explodes and kills two SEK officers. As a result, the trapped give up the plan to get down through a maintenance tunnel. The hiding place of the kidnappers is found in Landitz, but they have already fled and have installed a camera for surveillance instead. Von Landitz receives a fax from prison that tells her that Carlo Ludowski is the blackmailer. She finds out that his brother Walter is also involved in the blackmail, and tells him when the money is handed over that his wife and daughter are on the bridge. Walter gives up and begs von Landitz to save her, while Kalle drives away with the money.

Because the police interrupted the video transmission, Kalle can no longer observe the planned demolition of the bridge and therefore drives back to the bridge. He disguises himself as a SEK official and notices that von Landitz is driving to the bridge with his brother. He therefore blows up another part of the bridge. Traber lets the other three stuck people get into his company car and builds a ramp on a gas bottle. As the car drives over the ramp, Traber blows the gas bottle off. The shock wave causes the car to jump over the hole in the bridge so that the three people are safe. Von Landitz, on the other hand, jumps onto Traber's part of the bridge in a pickup truck with a winch on the loading area. She ties the rope to the bridge and jumps down with Traber in the pickup. It stays just above the ground and both can jump off before the rope breaks and the pickup crashes. Kalle is already waiting for her downstairs. You can overwhelm him, but Walter comes with a gun to shoot his brother. When von Landitz assures him that the bomb was detonated by remote detonator during the pile-up and that he did not kill any people, he gives up. Kalle detonates another explosive charge, so that he is killed by falling parts of the bridge. In the end, Traber and von Landitz visit their Cobra 11 colleagues in the hospital.

Awards

The pilot won the Taurus Award for best stunt in a foreign film in 2004 .

criticism

  • Quota meter : “The classic“ Alarm for Cobra 11 - The Autobahn Police ”received an official offshoot. The concept remained almost unchanged in the new series. Again, police officers from the motorway police also investigated beyond the expressways. Cars, people, and fire skins flew through the air again. And again the scripts consisted of loose connections between the action scenes. The only new thing was the line-up of police officers, because Susanna von Landitz was the first woman to sit behind the wheel of an emergency vehicle. Therefore even the text in the opening credits had to be changed. [...] At the side of the qualified inspector, the “daring street cop” Frank Traber fought against the well-known car smugglers, murderers and blackmailers. It goes without saying that the chemistry between the unequal couple was not right at all at first and that the different levels of education were also a popular topic that the authors took up again and again. "

Odds

With ratings of 5.46 million total viewers (19.5%) and 3.2 million viewers among 14- to 49-year-olds (27.9%), the pilot film performed only marginally worse than the week before Run episode of the original series.

Trivia

  • For the crash of the witness in his jeep in the quarry, footage from episode 82 ( Black Sheep ) was reused. This is because the first season of the spin-off was produced at the same time as the sixth production season of the original series (episodes 81 to 97). Some vehicles from the pile-up also appeared in other episodes of the original series at the beginning.
  • The motorway bridge really existed and had to be replaced by a new building due to its poor condition. The old bridge was blown up after the construction of the new building and the footage from the blow-up was used for the film.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Taurus World Stunt Awards 2004 at the IMDb
  2. ↑ The television cemetery: spin-off of "Cobra 11" in Quotenmeter 18 November, 2010
  3. ↑ "Team 2" has a successful start at Odds Meter , April 18, 2003