Scene of the crime: The dead person on the night train

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Episode of the series Tatort
Original title The dead man on the night train
Country of production Germany
original language German
Production
company
MR
length 89 minutes
classification Episode 817 ( List )
First broadcast November 20, 2011 on Das Erste
Rod
Director Lars Kraume
script Lars Kraume
music Julian Maas
Christoph M. Kaiser
camera Armin Alker
cut Silke Franken
occupation

The Dead on the Night Train is a television film from the crime series Tatort . Lars Kraumes film is the second case of the Frankfurt investigative team Steier and Mey , played by Joachim Król and Nina Kunzendorf . The report produced by the Hessischer Rundfunk was partly filmed on original locations such as Görresstraße and first broadcast on November 20, 2011 on the first .

action

Chief Inspector Mey is called while jogging in the morning and ordered to Frankfurt Central Station : Rüdiger Lange's blood-covered body was found in a compartment on the night train from Warsaw . He was shot and an armed suspect fled the train when the police arrived. He shot a police dog that threatened to bite him. Inspector Steier, who has just been released from the clinic after being stabbed, is already on site. At first everything looks like a robbery, because Lange had bank receipts with him, after which he had just withdrawn 15,000 euros in Poland. The investigator duo Steier and Mey seeks out Elsa Lange, the dead man's wife, to deliver the sad news. Little did you know that Stanislav Kilic, a former colleague of Lange, just had an uninvited visit. Kilic did not yet know that Lange was the murder victim and is waiting for him. He indicates that she and her children are in danger and tells her that her husband should see him at the hotel.

The investigators learn from Elsa Lange that her husband used to be a paramedic in the Bundeswehr and in Afghanistan , but was dishonorably dismissed three years ago for illegal drug trafficking . She is actually expecting him back from Warsaw and he wanted to bring 15,000 euros with him. Since the investigators sense that the woman may be threatened and fearful, they put her under observation. In the evening Elsa drives to Kilic's hotel and tells him that her husband is dead. He then describes her husband's last evening on the train from Warsaw, after which they had an argument, but he didn't kill him. When he notices that Elsa was being monitored, he disappears from the hotel. While Mey is chasing him, she is incapacitated by two men with a stun gun. Then Steier and Mey go to Elsa Lange and demand that she tell them what she knows. Steier and Mey found out that the fugitive prime suspect, Stanislav Kilic, and Elsa's husband knew each other from Afghanistan, where both were involved in drug smuggling activities from Afghanistan via Poland to Germany.

After Steier slept the night in his office, he goes with Mey to evaluate the KTU . The ballisticians identified a 38-caliber revolver as the murder weapon, and this does not match the cartridge case found on the dead dog. However, the DNA on the animal's teeth clearly belongs to Stanislav Kilic. When asked by the BKA , which has saved this data, strict confidentiality is required. It seems reasonable to assume that Mey was incapacitated by Defense Department officials . Thomsen and Hartmann appear in the Presidium, apologize and explain that an action by the MAD is currently being carried out. This is of high national interest and the homicide squad should please cooperate with them. Mey meets with Thomsen and learns that Kilic is still active in the drug trade and will meet with his buyers shortly. At that moment, the MAD will strike. Mey and Steier can be present at this action and witness how Kilic is killed in the whole commotion.

But there is really no motif for Steier and Mey. You go to the crime scene again and come to the conclusion from the traces of blood that Lange must have shot himself. Since he wasn't dead immediately, he still had time to throw the gun out of the window himself. In doing so, he deliberately wanted to let Kilic appear as the perpetrator because he blamed him for having been discharged from the army. Steier and Mey drive down the railway line and actually find the weapon. Since this resolution of the crime is not really useful to anyone, they throw the weapon away again and leave it with Kilic as the murderer. So Elsa Lange can get the term life insurance of 250,000 euros that her husband had paid out.

background

The shooting of The Dead on the Night Train took place on 26 days from April 27, 2011 to June 5, 2011. Lars Kraume's script is based on an episode from Axel Petermann's book On the Trail of Evil , two more Frankfurt crime scenes based on this will follow.

The night train from Warsaw shown in the film is not a real train of the Polish State Railways . A train from the company Bahnouristikexpress (BTE) from Nuremberg was used , in which the interior scenes were filmed on two days.

The film was nominated for the 2012 Grimme Prize .

reception

Audience ratings

The first broadcast of Der Tote im Nachtzug on November 20, 2011 in Germany was seen by a total of 9.30 million viewers and, as the winner of the day, achieved a market share of 24.8% for Das Erste ; In the group of 14 to 49 year old viewers , 3.14 million viewers and a market share of 19.4% were achieved.

In Austria, 863,000 viewers and a 27 percent market share were achieved.

criticism

“A dead man on the night train from Warsaw. Robbery? An old calculation from Afghanistan? Inspector Steier surrenders to the red wine, colleague Mey to a military policeman - and then both show human size. This couple is great. Currently the best in crime-thriller Germany. This 'crime scene' does a lot differently than is usual in the ARD series - and author-director Lars Kraume does it differently: action, hand-held camera, flashback, a damaged detective, great rhythm. Every scene a little party! "

- Rainer Tittelbach : tittelbach.tv

“A lot of things are very good in this 'crime scene'. Too good maybe. With every new and precisely determined detail, the moral dilemma of Commissioners Steier and Mey increases. So they take matters into their own hands, using and interpreting the result of the showdown between police officers and drug dealers for their good social purposes. The fact that they for their part have to resort to embezzlement and insurance fraud leads to the desired result, but should go down in the history of the 'crime scene' as a probably unique case of a significant criminal offense by the prosecutors - and in front of us all. Will the public prosecutor take over? "

- Jochen Hieber : FAZ.net

“[...] This scene from Frankfurt's new 'Tatort' is a brilliant example of how pointed psychological storytelling and criminalistic detailed work can play together. A sentence from him, an irritated look from her, the relationship between the two investigators is already defined - and leads directly to the work of the two characters. There are no frills in Frankfurt's new 'crime scene', no gags as ends in themselves, no humorous skirmishes between the police officers that distract from the actual case. Any movement here leads back to crime; everything that resonates in the plot in terms of human and comedy, longing and tragedy, is immediately absorbed in the thriller. How well you think you know Steier, the unbearable jazz snob who is always pumped full of red wine, and Mey, the sympathetically impertinent cowboy boot lady! 'The dead man on the night train' [...] is only the second episode of the investigative team. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. crew-united.de: The Dead on the Night Train , accessed on November 21, 2011.
  2. tatort-fundus.de: Template for three HR-TATORTe: “On the trail of evil” , accessed on November 22, 2011.
  3. frankenpost.de: Railway wagons as a backdrop for a crime scene crime story , accessed on November 22, 2011.
  4. quotemeter.de: «Tatort»: Król and Kunzendorf are clearly increasing , accessed on November 21, 2011.
  5. Medienforschung ORF , data from Sunday, November 21, 2011.
  6. tittelbach.tv: Series “Tatort - The Dead on the Night Train” , accessed on November 21, 2011.
  7. FAZ.net: Investigators looking for clues in the compartment , accessed on November 21, 2011.
  8. spiegel.de: The Jazz Wreck and the Estrogen Bomb , accessed on November 23, 2011.