The living and the dead - A Taunus thriller

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Episode of the series Der Taunuskrimi
Original title The living and the dead
Country of production Germany
original language German
Production
company
all-in-production GmbH
length 180 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
classification Episode 8 + 9 ( list )
First broadcast January 2nd and 4th 2017 on ZDF
Rod
Director Marcus O. Rosenmüller
script Kris Karathomas
Marcus O. Rosenmüller
production Annette Reeker
music Florian Tessloff
camera Stefan Spreer
cut Raimund Vienken
Claudia Klook
occupation
chronology

←  Predecessor
Bad Wolf - A Taunus thriller

Successor  →
In the forest - A Taunus thriller

Die Lebenden und die Toten - Ein Taunuskrimi is a two-part German television film from 2017. The literary film adaptation is based on the novel of the same name by Nele Neuhaus and is the eighth and ninth episodes of the crime series Der Taunuskrimi .

action

prehistory

While jogging, Kirsten Stadler had a breakdown due to a brain hemorrhage . When her daughter Helen is a little late on training together, she finds her mother lying there unconscious. Helen Stadler does not have her cell phone with her and tries desperately to get help, which she does not manage in time. Kirsten Stadler is declared brain dead in the hospital. The attending physician, Dr. Simon Burmeister, asked family members to consider organ donation .

Part 1

A sniper kills three people in quick succession who at first glance seem to have nothing to do with each other. The media immediately reported on the "Taunus Sniper", and there was uncertainty among the public about what the investigators Oliver von Bodenstein, Pia Kirchhoff and Kai Ostermann were forced to take. Get help from a LKA - Profiler , which is of the opinion that the police with conventional investigative work in this case would not.

The perpetrator sends the police a kind of confession letter in the form of a self-written obituary notice, after which he informs that the reasons for the death of these victims are "failure to provide assistance and negligent homicide". The investigators are gradually discovering that the shooter's revenge is not on those who have been shot, but on their relatives. The living should be punished and not the dead. The investigators questioned the bereaved in the hope of finally finding a connection between the apparently random victims. A trail leads them to a clinic where two of the victims' relatives had worked until a few years earlier.

This finally draws the investigators' attention to Kirsten Stadler, who was admitted to the said hospital as a former patient and whose organs were released for transplantation after her death . The decision to have the transplant was made by her daughter Helen Stadler, which was very difficult for her in the situation, as the father of the dead was strictly against it. The transplant coordinator Bettina Hesse, whose husband became the third victim of the shooter, advised Helen on this and also influenced her decision. Before the murder of Hesse's husband, the wife of the ambulance driver Patrick Schwarzer, who drove Kirsten Stadler to the hospital, died. As it turned out later, he had lost unnecessary time due to carelessness on the way back from the scene.

The first victim was the mother of Renate Rohleder, a neighbor of the Stadlers, who notified the ambulance at Helen Stadler's request, but allowed almost twenty minutes to pass before the emergency call because she had to take care of her dog. The investigators fear that the relatives of those who were supplied with the organs by Kirsten Stadler are now also in danger, as is the surgical team that carried out the organ removal at the time. The persons concerned and their relatives are informed as quickly as possible and protected as much as possible. When Commissioner Kirchhoff wants to warn the transplant doctor Jens-Uwe Hartig, she meets him at the grave of Helen Stadler. He tells her that she was his fiancée and threw herself off a bridge in front of a truck a few months ago. With this background information, the investigators are now certain that the key to solving the case lies with the Stadler family. After Commissioner Bodenstein speaks to Dirk Stadler and finds out that the widower is severely handicapped, he is no longer a suspect. The investigators have no idea that he is deceiving them skillfully.

Part 2

Dirk Stadler has not yet finished his tour of revenge. After punishing those who he believes were guilty of his wife's death by killing one of her family members, he focuses on members of the transplant team. Despite the caution from the police, this time the wife of a transplant surgeon is shot dead. A letter of confession received by the press explains the connection to the deaths of Kirsten and Helen Stadler. The next victim is the recipient of Kirsten Stadler's heart. Bodenstein and his colleague Martin Probst happened to be nearby and started the pursuit of the perpetrator, who they still did not know that it was Dirk Stadler, who only faked his disability. To avoid his pursuers, he shoots Probst's cell phone and accidentally kills him. Bodenstein suspects Helen's fiancé, Jens-Uwe Hartig, to be the perpetrator and has him written out for a manhunt.

Commissioner Kirchhoff doubts that Helen Stadler was so depressed that she threw herself off the bridge, because shortly before her death she had dealt with the exact circumstances of her mother's death. With the help of Jens-Uwe Hartig, she was able to find out the recipients of her mother's organs and encountered a medical scandal. In order to rule out suicide , Helen Stadler's body is exhumed and the forensic doctor now finds foreign skin particles under the fingernails.

Meanwhile, Dr. Simon Burmeister kidnapped by Dirk Stadler. He forces the surgeon to amputate his right hand himself so that he can never operate again and harm other people. When the investigators find out that Dirk Stadler is the serial killer, he is searched for with high pressure. After the skin particles under Helen Stadler's fingernails were clearly passed on to the clinic director Dr. Ulrich Hausmann can be assigned, he is arrested. She found out that he was manipulating organ allocation and thereby raising funds for his research. When she tried to confront him, he had pushed her off the bridge. Little does Bodenstein suspect that he himself is still on Stadler's “list” because he signed the final report at the time that declared Helen Stadler's death as a suicide. After Bodenstein can catch Dirk Stadler, a sniper shoots the widower, who then throws himself from the roof of the building.

background

The seventh book in the Bodenstein & Kirchhoff series was filmed with Die Lebenden und die Toten . The producer Annette Reeker , who had been involved in the series since the second episode as well as a screenwriter (with the pseudonym Anna Tebbe), no longer worked as a writer here.

reception

Audience rating

Part 1 of Die Lebenden und die Toten reached 6.06 million viewers in prime time on ZDF on January 2, 2017 , corresponding to 17.2 percent of the market share. On January 4, 2017, the second part was seen by 7.14 million viewers and thus achieved a market share of 20.6 percent.

Reviews

Tilmann P. Gangloff from tittelbach.tv said: Marcus O. Rosenmüller with Die Lebenden und die Toten “succeeded in another thriller well worth seeing.” “The plot is complex and always provides surprises; the story carries the two-parter easily over 180 minutes. There is no need for frills; the film is staged in a pleasantly purist manner. "

Ulrich Feld wrote at the Frankfurter Neue Presse : “The film really tastes this rollercoaster of emotions, and it does it really well in terms of craftsmanship. The actors are consistently in top form and the ominous music by Florian Tessloff gives the story an extraordinary acoustic density. "The" backgrounds [are consistently] intelligently linked. "

With quota meter. de, Stefan Turiak expressed himself not quite so positively: “'The Living and the Dead' is the seventh adaptation, which was split into two ambitious episodes. Whatever is in the book, the overzealous staging by Marcus O. Rosenmüller did not necessarily help to turn it into an exciting, modern thriller. ”He went on to write:“ Usual and well-known genre ingredients, psychological perpetrator profile clichés become without special skill half cooked. The background of the case seems both predictable and constructed, and yet somehow drawn by the hair. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Release certificate for the living and the dead - A Taunus thriller, part 1 . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 166422 / V). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. Release certificate for the living and the dead - A Taunus thriller, part 2 . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 166450 / V). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  3. ^ A b Tilmann P. Gangloff : Tim Bergmann, Felicitas Woll, Rosenmüller. Despite Tukur - the star is the story film review at tittelbach.tv, accessed on March 15, 2017.
  4. Ulrich Feld: The Living and the Dead at fnp.de, accessed on May 13, 2017.
  5. Stefan Turiak: The living and the dead at quotenmeter.de, accessed on May 13, 2017.