Inspector Beck: Angel of Death

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Movie
German title Death Angel
Original title Beck - Spår i mörker
Country of production Sweden
Denmark
Norway
Germany
original language Swedish and Danish
Publishing year 1997
length 87 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Morten Arnfred
script Rolf Börjlind
production Lars Blomgren
Thomas Lydholm
music Ulf Dageby
camera Eric Kress
cut Morten Giese
occupation

Angel of Death is the eighth film from the crime series Kommissar Beck - The New Cases , which was produced in 1997 with Peter Haber, Stina Rautelin and Mikael Persbrandt in the leading roles.

action

Martin Beck is on his way to a multi-day vacation with his criminal investigator colleague and partner Lena Klingström when several gruesome murders happen in the Stockholm subway . He tries everything to save his vacation, the first in a long time, but his girlfriend thwarts him. She enforces that both of them break off their journey and rush back to the homicide department. There Beck is assigned to head the investigative staff.

Four details are the same in all of these subway murders: they all took place in the subway tunnels, all of them are beheadings, and a wall graffito was found near the crime scene . These wall drawings turn out to be “ X- ( ”, which in Leetspeak jargon simply means “death.” After some confusion about the fact that the murder victims apparently hardly defended themselves against the fatal attack, the investigators recognize that the fourth feature is the U -Bahn shaft lighting had to have been switched off briefly.

As the investigation progresses, it becomes clear that the underground train driver Erik Lindgren, who cannot be found, must have something to do with the murders. The search of his apartment reveals that he had access to safety-relevant wiring diagrams for tunnel electrification and lighting systems because of further training courses to become a production engineer. His boss considers him an exemplary and always reliable employee who, because of his frequent extra shifts on public holidays, apparently has no family or girlfriend. Meanwhile, Beck finds tampons in the bathroom. The spectators, but not the police, witness Lindgren's domestic conflict with this unknown woman. When Beck finds Lindgren's hiding place in a discarded junk wagon in the side wing of a subway tunnel with great intuition, the frightened Lindgren, who is obviously not the culprit, lets talk to himself after a while. The woman from his apartment turns out to be his considerably younger sister Annika.

Lindgren testifies that the perpetrators are believed to be a gang of youngsters who bloodily translated a computer action game called Final Doom into reality. Annika is part of this gang that threatened to kill his sister if he unpacked to the police. But that's exactly what he's doing now and is leading the emergency services to the gang's hiding place in a disused factory on the outskirts of Stockholm. In an ambush by the gang, Lindgren is killed and Beck just barely gets away with a head injury because the police reinforcements arrive just in time.

The police catch Annika by monitoring her apartment. In the questioning, she stoically denies that she knows anything relevant to the crime. Only when Beck describes how much her brother, who was put to death, loved her, does she give in and reveal her insider knowledge . Fortunately, her contribution to the crime was limited to technical assistance and so she was not personally involved in any murder. At the final showdown , the police forces arrive just in time to prevent a massacre at a subway station. As before, the perpetrators were armed with machetes and military night vision devices and managed to turn off the lights. Since the police were well prepared this time, the juvenile perpetrators can be overwhelmed. Beck could still go on vacation with his partner in the end. If it weren't for an urgent request from New York City to help out in a similar acute danger situation.

Cinema, TV and DVD versions

The cinema release in Sweden was on October 31, 1997, in Denmark on December 25, 1997, in Finland on August 26, 1998. It was first broadcast on German television on September 19, 1998 on ARD . The film drew 1,595,000 viewers in Sweden before being televised for the first time on TV4 in 2002.

Like all other films in the series, the thriller Angel of Death was released on DVD and VHS , but only available in Swedish. German dubbed films from the series, which are available as video, are only available from episode 9. The Swedish VHS was released in February 1998, the DVD was released on November 13, 2002.

In the theatrical version the film has a playing time of 90 minutes, in the television version and on DVD 86 minutes.

Web links

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Fyrans Beck-satsning går hem (in Swedish), Svenska Dagbladet, August 20, 2002, accessed October 11, 2019.
  2. ↑ a b Spor i mørket (1997) - The Swedish Film Database. Swedish Film Institute, accessed October 12, 2019 .