Stralsund: Free fall

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Episode in the Stralsund series
Original title Freefall
Stralsund (TV series) .jpg
Country of production Germany
original language German
length 90 minutes
classification Episode 5
First broadcast December 30, 2013 on ZDF
Rod
Director Martin Eigler
script Martin Eigler,
Sven S. Poser
production Wolfgang Cimera
music Oliver Kranz
camera Christoph Chassée
cut Jörg Kadler
occupation
chronology

←  Predecessor
Deadly Promise

Successor  →
Crossfire

Freier Fall is a German television film by Martin Eigler from 2013. It is the fifth film in the ZDF crime film series Stralsund . Katharina Wackernagel , Wotan Wilke Möhring , Alexander Held and Michael Rotschopf play the main roles of the investigators . The main guest roles are Wanja Mues , Rudolf Kowalski , Wolfram Koch , Katharina M. Schubert and Tim Wilde .

action

While the employees of Detective Chief Inspector Gregor Meyer celebrate their boss's birthday in a karaoke bar , Detective Inspector Benjamin Lietz sits with a tense face in his office at a computer, where he gains access to top-secret information. Then he drives to his brother Achim's apartment, who is obviously addicted to gambling. When Lietz turns up at the birthday party some time later, he is already expected by the arcade operator Godo Dorfmann, to whom he passes on the information he has previously obtained, in return for which he receives his brother's promissory notes. He warns Godo, who had repeatedly put him under pressure in the past that if he did business with his brother again he would kill him.

On the other day, forensic technician Stein wants to know from his colleagues Hidde and Petersen whether they have been on his computer because it was accessed at 9:38 p.m. At the same time, key witness Walter Runge is to be brought to the public prosecutor to testify. The man convicted of drug trafficking has agreed to testify against those behind it. On the way, an approved stopover is made at Runge's wife. When Runge and the prison officer guarding him enter the café run by Runge's wife, she lies injured on the floor and a hooded man points the gun at Runge and the officer. When the policeman Thorsten Grawer, who is also used as escort, enters the room, the masked man shoots him without a word. Runge tries to escape, but is followed outside by the man and is shot in the back. Lietz, who is nearby, suspects that something must have happened and angrily hits his steering wheel. He passed on the report to his colleagues that he was nearby and was taking over the reported shooting. The prison officer is in shock and says that one was expected, the perpetrator shot immediately, she could not do anything. It works in Lietz.

While Gunter "Godo" Dorfmann is interrogated by Nina Petersen because he was in contact with Runge, Lietz receives a call from Klara Grosse, his brother Achim's wife, who begs him for help because she is worried about her husband, who is acting strange. In private, Achim confesses to his brother that Godo and his people know his address, so he has to go. Benjamin Lietz gives Achim the promissory notes and says that he is out of the matter, they no longer want anything from him. However, Achim is convinced that these people would never leave him in peace again.

While Godo is still being questioned, Max Morolf suddenly appears from the drug search. After a conversation with agency chief Meyer, he demands that the interrogation of Dorfmann be stopped immediately. Petersen and Hidde are somewhat speechless. It turns out that Dorfmann is Morolf's informant. In the so-called big round, Morolf explains the connections between the cases to those present. In the drug search, the case goes under the code name "Bernstein". It is about drug trafficking on a large scale and substance that is manufactured in Poland and the Czech Republic. The gang also committed a number of murders. Despite all efforts, so far only marginal figures have gone online. Walter Runge was the first member of "Bernstein" to have gone so far as to break his silence. Among other things, he wanted to reveal the real name of the managing director. The alias of the head of this organization is "Victor".

When Achim Lietz wants to go away with his family, Maik Gerber, one of Godo's people, shows up at his house, who says that the two of them can go quietly, but that Victor is asked to go to Achim. Around the same time, Lietz reveals to his girlfriend Nina Petersen that the disastrous information came from him and that he had repeatedly done Godo minor favors in the past. All of his money has already been used for it. He wanted to protect his brother's family, who had been threatened with death. He asks Nina to keep his back free for a few hours, because these people should still have something in their hands against Achim.

In a conversation between Meyer and Morolf, Meyer Lietz defends against Morolf's critical remarks. Lietz is now busy accusing Godo and beating him up. He really wants to know who is behind "Victor" and doesn't shy away from pointing his gun at the man who is handcuffed and crouching on the floor, whose bullet hits the wall next to him. Godo says that if he wants to know more, he should just ask his brother, he would have sat at the gaming table with Victor so often that you almost had the feeling that they were father and son.

Only a little later, Dorfmann is found dead by Morolf and Nina Petersen. Nina, who is looking for Lietz, finds him sitting next to his dead brother in his apartment. They just disposed of it like that, says Lietz bitterly, and insists that he has to find Victor. Nina then tells him about her pregnancy. A call from Hidde interrupts both embraces, he tells her that they now know who shot the colleague from the drug investigation and Runge, and that the fingerprints on the gun were from Achim Lietz. Benjamin assures Nina that he will surrender as soon as he has given his sister-in-law the news of his death.

Petersen tells Hidde in the meantime at the office that Lietz had put evidence on a dealer named Klaus Weigert years ago, who then hanged himself in prison. This man was visited several times by a Peter shoemaker. Schuhmacher is one of three suspects who could be "Victor". The SEK moves out and meets shoemakers in his garden. He says that Weigert was his son, who was given false evidence, that his wife couldn't handle it and has been confused ever since. Yes, he knows the name of the man who is responsible: Benjamin Lietz. He is now after Maik Gerber, who was after the family in his brother's holiday home and runs away when he sees Lietz. Both have a shootout. Under pressure, Gerber reveals the name of "Victor": Peter Schuhmacher. Lietz has already turned around when Gerber reaches for a gun in his stocking, whereupon Lietz shoots him.

Benjamin Lietz has now been put out for a manhunt because he has also pointed the weapon at his colleague Morolf. Petersen and Hidde, who have meanwhile returned to Schuhmacher's house in order to take him into protective custody, are too late. When she arrived, several shots penetrated the window panes, one of which hit Nina Petersen in the stomach area. Schuhmacher was shot by Lietz. Nina Petersen will get through, but she has lost her child.

production

Production notes, filming

The film was produced by Network Movie , Film- und Fernsehproduktion Wolfgang Cimera GmbH & Co. KG, Cologne, production management: Annette Oswald, production management: Ralph Retzlaff, responsible ZDF editor Martin R. Neumann .

Free Fall was filmed in and around Stralsund .

background

Wotan Wilke Möhring, who became the crime scene investigator Thorsten Falke during the current series , needed a comprehensible departure from Stralsund, as both roles allegedly could not be reconciled. However, it should not be a complete farewell to the row figure Möhring, as ZDF explained, even if not as an investigator. Oliver Junge writes in the FAZ that the ARD rules for crime scene protagonists stipulate that other investigative roles must be given up. It is "curious", however, that the series with Max Morolf, as already indicated, will be continued as the new investigator. Wanja Mues, who plays this character, would then also investigate twice because he had taken on the role of Matula successor in the series Ein Fall für Zwei on ZDF . Daland Segler remarked in the Frankfurter Rundschau that a contract clause of the ARD prevented such a constellation.

Private matters of the commissioners

Coldplay's Viva la Vida will be interpreted during the karaoke party . Nina Petersen learns that she is pregnant after all, she is eight weeks old, but at the end of the episode she loses her child in a shootout. You learn from Benjamin Lietz that the difficulties he had in the past can be traced back to his brother and his gambling addiction. The fact that he did not always act correctly was the case before the difficulties with his brother began. So he manipulated evidence, which resulted in a suicide and caught up with him again in this episode.

Office manager Meyer indicates that Max Morolf, with whom he had previously worked in the internal investigation department and who is now employed in the drug investigation department, is the team to which Lietz will hardly return and with whom Nina Petersen will be absent for the time being , and he will tell them that fair colleagues await him. Max Morolf is played by Wanja Mues, one of the sons of the actor Dietmar Mues , who played Nina Petersen's father in the first episodes.

publication

Stralsund: Freier Fall was first broadcast on December 30, 2013 in prime time on ZDF .

The film was released on DVD by Studio Hamburg Enterprises on April 22nd, 2016 together with episodes 6, 7 and 8.

reception

Audience rating

The film was followed by 5.95 million viewers, which corresponds to a market share of 18.4%.

criticism

TV Spielfilm pointed the thumbs up, gave one of three possible points for humor, ambition and action, two for tension and drew the conclusion: "Bitter vengeance and family tragedy."

Thomas Gehringer rated the film with four out of six possible stars and wrote on tittelbach.tv that the fifth “Stralsund” film was “out of line”. “Free Fall” is “less of a classic police thriller with action elements”. “In return, a cleverly constructed farewell will be celebrated for Wotan Wilke Möhring, who has meanwhile become 'Tatort' commissioner”. Möhring played “once again as a policeman driven by his own guilt and being persecuted by his own colleagues”. The story is “exciting, but the other characters remain poorly developed. The conventional staging and stiff dialogues also spoil the pleasure, ”it continued. Möhring alias Lietz becomes in “Freier Fall” the “central figure, a policeman as driven and torn who wants to make good his guilt” and has to “evade persecution by his own colleagues”. One could say: "Martin Eigler and Sven Poser, the 'fathers' of the series, use the external compulsion to write Möhring out as one of the main actors, aggressively and cleverly."

Even Hans Hoff from the Süddeutsche Zeitung put it on the farewell Mohring, and thought that he finish "his official existence on ZDF with a strange case." Because although he plays big, “the inflated story cannot be saved”. The director and screenwriter would hardly have trusted their own “art” and would have fled in “mass”, “where less would have been more”. At the latest when one suspects “that there is no survival for the main character as a commissioner”, “the interest in the progression of the inflated story, which even a brilliant Wotan Wilke Möhring could no longer save”, waned. "Everything is terribly simple, so terribly foreseeable."

Quotenmeter.de represented the last performance of Wotan Wilke Möhring as commissioner in Stralsund the opinion that it was "no great loss". Overall, the character seems “untrustworthy”, although “over long distances” it remains unclear, “whether Möhring intentionally created the role as woodenly” as he played it “or whether he succeeded in this case not better”. Regarding the role of Michael Rotschopf, it was said that his character "written confused over large parts" and indiscriminately "between a sympathetic and overstretched boss" vacillates. “All around convincing” could “only be conveyed by Katharina Wackernagel, who conveyed the emotional conflict between work and partner more than credibly”. You buy "the role over the entire duration of the game".

Oliver Junge from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, however, saw it completely differently and said: “They say: wow! At the end of Wotan Wilke Möhring's service, ZDF delights us with a courageous crime thriller from the 'Stralsund' series. A terrific free fall is presented. "Junge spoke of an" absolutely worth seeing fifth 'Stralsund' episode ", which shows us a commissioner," who loses every grip, who believes he is at least morally right , creates a fiasco that is completely intolerable, notices it himself, and frees itself from all television crime chains at the price of its own downfall ”. Although "the case itself should have been a bit more sophisticated", it also received a lot of praise "thanks to its excellent actors". This time it is above all Wotan Wilke Möhring who shines with an “exceptional performance”: “From start to finish, his game is like a tightrope act, always focused on the next step, which could actually be the last. When was the last time something like that was taken from a television detective? "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Stralsund - Free fall see page networkmovie.de
  2. ↑ a b Thomas Gehringer: Series "Stralsund - Freier Fall". Möhring, Wackernagel, Sven Poser, Martin Eigler. Strong finish with weaknesses
    see page tittelbach.tv. Retrieved June 25, 2019.
  3. ↑ a b Oliver Junge: “Stralsund” crime story in the second: This commissioner is now losing every hold.
    In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , December 30, 2013. Accessed June 25, 2019.
  4. ↑ Daland Segler: TV review: Stralsund - Freier Fall. The waves of murder and love
    In: Frankfurter Rundschau, December 29, 2013. Accessed June 25, 2019.
  5. ↑ a b David Grzeschik: ARD annual quiz loses a million. Oddsmeter.de , December 31, 2013, accessed June 25, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Stralsund, episode 5 - 8 Fig. DVD case (in the picture: Katharina Wackernagel, Wanja Mues)
  7. ↑ Stralsund: Free fall see page tvspielfilm.de (including 26 film images). Retrieved June 25, 2019.
  8. ↑ Hans Hoff : "Stralsund: Freier Fall" on ZDF. Let's talk later.
    In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , December 30, 2013. Retrieved June 25, 2019.
  9. ↑ Frederic Servatius: Stralsund: Free fall see page quotenmeter.de. Retrieved June 25, 2019.