Counter Investigation - No murder goes unpunished

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Movie
German title Counter Investigation - No murder goes unpunished
Original title Contre-enquête
Country of production France
original language French
Publishing year 2007
length 81 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Franck Mancuso
script Franck Mancuso
production Patrick Giménez
Romain Le Grand
music Krishna Levy
camera Jérôme Alméras
cut Andrea Sedláčková
occupation

Counter Investigation - No murder goes unpunished (Original title: Contre-enquête ) is a French crime film from 2007.

action

Just as the detective Richard Malinowski was about to go on a bike ride with his daughter Émilie, he was called to the drug squad because an acquaintance of his was arrested with 200 grams of narcotics and needs his help. Émilie is upset and wants to see a friend until her father comes back, but is sexually murdered on the way .

Shortly afterwards, Malinowski is called by his friend and colleague Stéphane Josse that Émilie has been found in the forest: the girl was raped and beaten to death. After a short time, the suspect Daniel Eckmann, who is said to have been seen by a witness near the crime scene, is arrested. Although Eckmann makes a confession after 48 hours of pre-trial detention, he revokes this on the grounds that he was forced to do so. His defense attorney points out that the officers who questioned his client were all colleagues of the victim's father. Although there were no witnesses and no DNA could be found, Eckmann was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment with subsequent preventive detention. While in custody, he received many letters from women who had an affinity for murderers, until he finally came across Christine Carlier, whom he feigned love and a future together in order to later induce her to make a false testimony that justified doubts about his Guilt and thus a re-opening of his case.

Meanwhile, Eckmann continues to affirm his innocence in sensitive letters to Malinowski and pretends to be the victim of a miscarriage of justice . Malinowski withholds both the letters and his doubts about Eckmann's perpetration from his wife. While his wife Claire quietly tries to come to terms with the death of their daughter, it becomes an obsession for Malinowski to find out the truth about the crime. His boss, Michel Arnalde, tries in vain to stop him.

In 2005, Malinowski learned that his friend Stéphane Josse , who had meanwhile moved to Bordeaux , had arrested the serial killer Armand Salinas, who had already confessed to four child murders. Malinowski drives to Bordeaux and looks in the files for evidence that Salinas could also have killed Émilie. He finds out that a cousin of the serial killer lives 15 km from the crime scene. She confirms that her cousin was visiting her at the time of the crime. A witness claims to have seen Salinas in the forest in which Émilie's body was found.

Malinowski passes the new findings on to a court reporter. Claire only learns from television that her husband is trying to reopen the murder case on his own. When she happened to find prisoner Daniel Eckmann's hidden letters, she left Richard and moved in with her parents. Meanwhile, Christine Carlier reports to the police and testifies that she saw Salinas at the scene at the time of the crime. At the time, she believed that the murderer had already been convicted and therefore did not consider it necessary to report her observation to the police. She only became aware of their importance after the media reported about a possible miscarriage of justice. Salinas admits to having been in the forest, but asserts that he has nothing to do with the violent crime against Émilie.

Finally, the judgment against Eckmann is overturned due to reasonable doubts. He will receive compensation from his detention, with which he would like to build a new life in Nice. He appears on talk shows as a victim of a miscarriage of justice. Shortly before his release, Eckmann tore up a written confession hidden in the cloakroom of his locker that he initially wanted to send to Malinowski, and ate the scraps of paper. According to this confession, Émilie was his third victim. Eckmann meets with the alleged witness Christine Carlier, whom he instigated to give false testimony, in order, as he believes, only to help the truth win with the lie. Before Eckmann leaves Paris, he visits Richard Malinowski. Malinowski had already expected that. He knows the psyche of serial offenders and knows that they like to play with the relatives of their victims in order to enjoy their apparent invulnerability. So he gets a sedative from his wife Claire, an anesthetist, which he dissolves in whiskey. When Eckmann visits him before he leaves for Nice, Malinowski offers him this whiskey and, at his request, shows him the room of his murdered daughter.

Meanwhile, the sedative begins to work and Eckmann loses consciousness. When he comes to, he finds himself tied up in the forest next to a pit that has already been dug. Alluding to his rampage in the interrogation room, in which he almost shot Eckmann, Malinowski Eckmann makes it clear that such acts change a person, but that the act and the victims are often forgotten during the prison term and the perpetrator is sometimes even forgiven. In any case, he would never have seen a relative subsequently avenge the crime. So it would have been better for Eckmann if he hadn't kept writing him letters. Then you see Malinowski dragging Eckmann to the pit and kicking him inside. Then he wakes up in the car at his in-laws' house and sees his wife, who is opening the window. He drives away without a word. Whether his wife will return to him is not discussed in the film and therefore remains unclear. Since Eckmann's car was discovered locked at Orly Airport, the public assumed that he had initially traveled to an unknown location because of the suffering he had undergone in custody and did not want to be found.

In the following scene, Malinowski stands praying at his daughter's grave when his supervisor, to whom he had previously announced his resignation, approaches him and explains in a cryptic manner that he knows, and asks him whether he could live better with it? Malinowski then replies that he died three years ago from the death of his daughter.

It remains to be seen whether Malinowski was only informed by Dr. Delmas', through whom he learned of Salina's impotence and thus the innocence of Salinas in the death of his daughter, planned the murder of Eckmann or whether he worked towards it from the beginning and was only waiting for a favorable opportunity to get Eckmann out of custody so that he could got to him. The allusion to Eckmann's letters, through which he never got over the murder of his daughter, as well as his testimony at the pit that he had not believed in his innocence from the start, suggest the latter. As an experienced police officer, Malinowski knows that serial perpetrators like to let the relatives of their victims suffer by not only drawing their attention to the death of their loved ones again and again and thus ensuring that they do not end with the loss, but also for them describe the gruesome details of the act, as can be seen from the initial confession letter to Malinowski. For the same reason, they also keep the locations of undiscovered bodies to themselves, although it would no longer play a role in their sentence.

Reviews

“Captivating, excellently cast police thriller, which intelligently misleads the viewer again and again and comes up with a surprising ending. The first directorial work by an author who previously worked in the police service for 20 years. "

- Lexicon of international film

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Certificate of Approval for Counter Investigation - No murder goes unpunished . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , September 2007 (PDF; test number: 111 470 DVD).
  2. ↑ Counter Investigation - No murder goes unpunished. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film Service , accessed April 11, 2011 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used