Commissioner Lucas - bitter pills
| Episode in the series Commissioner Lucas | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Bitter pills |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| length | 89 minutes |
| classification | Episode 19 ( List ) |
| First broadcast | September 18, 2013 on ZDFneo |
| Rod | |
| Director | Stefan Kornatz |
| script | Christian Jeltsch |
| production | Olga movie |
| music |
Stefan Will Marco Dreckkötter Sebastian Zencke |
| camera | Martin Farkas |
| cut | Kai Schröter |
| occupation | |
| |
Bitter Pills is a ZDF film that is part of the series Kommissarin Lucas . Stefan Kornatz directed the television film that was broadcast in 2013. For Ellen Lucas ( Ulrike Kriener ), her nineteenth case is about a kidnapping that gets out of hand and drug trials in emerging countries. The main guest stars of this episode are Nina Kunzendorf , Anne Ratte-Polle and Thomas Dannemann .
action
The two daughters of the successful pharmaceutical manager Eva Stein have been kidnapped. The blackmailer demands a ransom of three million euros so that nothing happens to the children. He filmed them both over a long period of time, even while they were sleeping. Eva Stein turns to the police, where Chief Detective Ellen Lucas and her team take action. The perpetrator set a short deadline of just four hours to hand over the money. As a result, Lucas and her supervisor Boris Noethen are forced to improvise, which Lucas displeases. It makes it unmistakably clear to Noethen that the SEK should actually be consulted. There is also the fact that Noethen has been drinking and will continue to drink during the mission in an unobserved moment. The result is that while Eva Steiner and the blackmailer are handing over the money, an exchange of fire takes place in which the manager is shot and the blackmailer is critically injured. He is Prof. Dr. Robert Dohnen, the former head of the research department and also Eva Steiner's brother-in-law, with whom she worked closely until three months ago. Did he want to take revenge for what he saw as an unjustified dismissal shortly before the conclusion of a million dollar deal? After all, the two girls are drugged by a sleeping pill, but found unharmed in a nearby inn. Lucas demands that Noethen go into rehab and assures him that she will no longer cover his drinking. When the commissioner told her team that Noethen would be absent for several weeks without going into details and that she would head the commissioner for that time, her colleague Martin Schiff was openly hostile to her.
The investigations of the Commissioner and her employees Alex Eggert and Tom Brauer reveal inconsistencies. The question arises, why was Dohnen really fired? What does the multi-million dollar merger between Eva Steiner's family company and a Swiss pharmaceutical company have to do with it? When it becomes apparent that Dohnen's child pornographic material was discovered on the computer but wanted to sort it out internally with a dismissal, Lucas had to rethink her investigation. In the hospital, Dohnen's daughter Sophie tells her that her father won't shoot anyone and that he is the only one in the company who doesn't think about money. Everything that was told to her was a lie. Sophie desperately struggles to believe her that her father never had anything to do with child pornography and that they wanted to beat him up. Robert Dohnen dies shortly afterwards without having regained consciousness.
It turns out that when the money was handed over, Eva Steiner had a gun that her husband had given her, with which she deliberately shot her brother-in-law. Bernhard Graf had obtained this weapon from the petty criminal Freddy Lohse, who in turn bought it from Martin Schiff. A dispute later broke out between the two men, at the end of which Lohse was so unhappy that he was knocked off the ship that he was killed. The detective then tried everything to cover up his deeds, but did not succeed. Eva Steiner and her husband, on the other hand, wanted at all costs to prevent their brother-in-law from withdrawing the drug he had developed, since illegal tests carried out on children in India and Ukraine in orphanages had shown that they were longer Ingestion associated with incalculable risks, there were even deaths. Without approval of the drug, the family company had no future. The three million euros that Dohnen wanted to extort from Eva Stein were intended for the children who had been abused for the tests and were to go to an aid fund. Robert Dohnen did not have to die because he was a pervert, says Ellen Lucas when she arrested the Stein / Graf couple, but because he had a conscience.
Production, publication
Bitter Pillen was filmed from October 1 to December 7, 2012 in Regensburg and Munich and broadcast on ZDF on September 21, 2013 during prime time, after the film was first shown on September 18, 2013 in advance on the ZDFneo program .
reception
Audience rating
When it was broadcast on ZDF on September 21, 2013, the film was watched by 4.97 million viewers and achieved a market share of 17.4 percent.
criticism
TV movie found: "Dark old school suspense thriller"
Rainer Tittelbach from tittelbach.tv conceded to the ZDF series that "thanks to good creative forces (especially author Christian Jeltsch) it [is] going back to its old form". He also found that Brüggemann had “arrived in line” as Commissioner and that “Kunzendorf and Ratte-Polle” would stand up to Kriener “strongly”. "A little irritating" is that "the obvious theme of the film, European drug trials in emerging countries [...] only jumped out of the box at the end". It is also said that the author Jeltsch “led Ellen Lucas to her old strengths and her roots”. The critic praised Kriener's play and approach to her role. With Nina Kunzendorf, Anne Ratte-Polle and Brüggemann, Lucas / Kriener now have “adequate projection surfaces as a counterpart”. So the conclusion was: "'Bitter Pills' is a 'Lucas' case that finally follows on from the best episodes of the popular ZDF series."
Elisabeth Söllner and Florian Dopf fromquotemeter.de were also of the opinion that the title topic "Drug trials on foreign children", which is only discussed in more detail at the end of the story, had been tackled "a little late". At the beginning of the review it was said: “The crime thriller surprises its viewers with a very quickly narrated introduction. The child abduction and the escalated money handover are dealt with within a few minutes. Only then does it become clear that that should not have been the whole case, but that blackmail about child trafficking and the sale of weapons, in which one of the police officers is also integrated, is connected to the kidnapping case. That makes the story exciting again for the audience. ”Ulrike Kriener was praised for her“ authentic ”portrayal of the“ serious and thoughtful commissioner ”. Praise also went to Anna Brüggemann, who plays Kriener's / Lucas' assistant. It was said of Nina Kunzendorf that she managed to “captivate the audience” with “her strong gaze”. The conclusion was: “In general, the 19th episode of the crime series is convincing with its strong characters and authentic actors. The story is also well told, but would have turned out better with a slightly different timing. "
The Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung recommended the crime thriller as a “TV tip”. Author Christian Jeltsch wrote a few "bitter pills" into the script, it was said. The “performance of the actors” was found to be “good”, with Kriener and Kunzendorf in particular “knowing how to score” with their reduced game. It is true that the “bitter pills that give the title” only play “a minor role” as a subject of drug trials. “The acting characters” have “to swallow a lot that is not good for them”.
The film service stated: "Thanks to the originally constructed script and convincing supporting actors, an above-average (television series) crime thriller."
Anna Klöpper wrote for the taz that Alexander Lutz was acting “credibly desperate” in his role as a perpetually transient in promotions. “Director Steffen Kornatz sprinkled small, poisoned pills into the case,” it continued and shot down: “Some are just a little bitter in their finish, denied boarding, life. The aftertaste of antibiotics tested on children is much worse. It also gets stuck with the viewer - despite or perhaps because of the relevant motif in the rather conventionally knitted case. If evil is banal, it is all the more frightening. "
Claudia Schwartz wrote a review for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and wrote that with this film, the ZDF was demonstrating “how to lead a worth seeing, aging TV series into the new era and at the same time to tie in with a fine investigator [hold]. Ellen Lucas, superbly played by Ulrike Kriener, is a seldom strong and independent character who sometimes makes himself unpopular when it serves to establish the truth ”. Even if the “kidnapping drama 'Bitter Pills' may not seem logical in the end, it [may] be told cleverly and quickly staged. The result is a complex picture of a crime based on family secrets and the will to power ”. Schwartz said that it was "brilliantly implemented in an acting manner" with Kriener, Kunzendorf and Ratte-Polle as well as Brüggemann, "a remarkable female ensemble" that "is not so easy to see into the cards".
Web links
- Bitter pills in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Commissioner Lucas - bitter pills at fernsehserien.de
- Commissioner Lucas - Bitter Pills adS csfd.cz (with 26 pictures from the film)
- Commissioner Lucas - Bitter Pills Full Movie
Individual evidence
- ↑ Start dates for Commissioner Lucas - Bitter Pills . In: IMDb.de. Retrieved November 25, 2016 .
- ↑ ZDF Saturday crime thriller "Kommissarin Lucas - Bittere" Pillen / Nina Kunzendorf as counterparty to Ulrike Kriener adS presseportal.de. Retrieved September 3, 2017.
- ↑ Commissioner Lucas - Bitter Pills at crew-united.com.
- ^ A b Rainer Tittelbach : Series "Commissioner Lucas - Bitter Pills". Kriener, Kunzendorf, Kornatz. Knowledge of human nature , intuition & a certain depth adS tittelbach.tv . Retrieved September 3, 2017.
- ↑ Commissioner Lucas - Bitter Pills , In: TV Spielfilm . Retrieved September 3, 2017.
- ↑ Elisabeth Söllner, Florian Dopf: Commissioner Lucas - bitter pills for Quotenmeter.de . Retrieved September 3, 2017.
- ↑ TV tip: "Commissioner Lucas - Bitter Pills" In: Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung , September 21, 2013. Accessed on September 3, 2017.
- ↑ Commissioner Lucas - Bitter Pills adS filmdienst.de. Retrieved September 3, 2017.
- ↑ Anna Klöpper: Saturday crime thriller "Kommissarin Lucas" Bitter in Abgang In: Die Tageszeitung , September 21, 2013. Accessed on September 3, 2017.
- ↑ Claudia Schwartz: The new commissioner Lucas In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , September 20, 2013. Accessed on September 3, 2017.