Crime scene: the breath of death
| Episode of the series Tatort | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Touch of death |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Production company |
SWR Maran film |
| length | 87 minutes |
| classification | Episode 768 ( List ) |
| First broadcast | August 22, 2010 on First German Television |
| Rod | |
| Director | Lars Monday |
| script | Jürgen Werner |
| production |
Sebastian Hünerfeld Sabine Tettenborn |
| music | Stephan Massimo |
| camera | Cornelia Wiederhold |
| cut | Barbara Brückner |
| occupation | |
| |
Breath of Death is a television film from the crime series Tatort with the Ludwigshafen investigator duo Lena Odenthal ( Ulrike Folkerts ) and Mario Kopper ( Andreas Hoppe ). It is the 768th Tatort episode and a SWR production in collaboration with Maran Film . The episode was broadcast for the first time on August 22, 2010 on First German Television .
The investigators are on the trail of a perfidious serial killer who theatrically presents his victims in order to get Odenthal's attention. During the investigation, the Commissioner is in mortal danger and it is mainly thanks to the courageous efforts of her partner that she can be saved.
action
The chief detective Lena Odenthal and Mario Kopper are called to the port. There a murderer wrapped a woman's corpse in plastic wrap and hung it upside down from a crane. Wrapped in this way, the whole thing is reminiscent of a butterfly cocoon. The area at the harbor basin is cordoned off with a great deal of personnel and all traces are secured.
The investigations reveal that the victim is Andrea May, a soloist at the Mannheim Opera. A week earlier she had reported Christian Brenner, her ex-boyfriend, because he had beaten her and then tried to break into her wardrobe. Since Brenner works in the port, Odenthal can question him immediately. He denies having murdered May and claims to have met her over the Internet. He liked her because she was funny and they had a lot of fun together. Besides, she wouldn't have put up with everything and had him under control. He didn't break into her wardrobe. Odenthal believes him because the execution of the deed, including the preparation, does not match the impression she has of Brenner.
Kopper remembers a case from Mannheim in which a policewoman was suffocated with a plastic bag. Odenthal asks the investigating Commissioner Martina Schönfeld to come to Ludwigshafen to help solve the new case. It turns out that the commissioner is the sister of the Mannheim victim. She remembers that a Christian Brenner played a role in the course of the investigation. Brenner is summoned and interrogated, but Odenthal continues to rule him out as a perpetrator.
Odenthal searches for unresolved murders in recent years in which women have been suffocated. In addition to Petra Schönfeld, she comes across two other victims. All four were women who went through life with self-confidence and emancipation. However, there are no other common patterns. Only the second victim, a customs officer, had reported a break-in shortly before her death, analogous to Andrea May's report. Here, too, the perpetrator had left a photo to show the woman in question that she was being watched.
At the same time, Odenthal's colleague Edith Keller checked the ships that were anchored in the respective ports at the time of the crime and came across the cargo ship "Emma". Although Captain Stauer and the ship's dispatcher Daniel Tretschok lodge a complaint, the ship is detained in the port and searched. So there are actually items of clothing on board that have DNA traces from three victims. When it turns out that Mirko Klingspohn, a convicted rapist, is among the crew, he is inevitably suspected. To avoid unpleasant questions, he flees. Odenthal, however, finds it strange that the clothes were laid out as if on the presentation plate, while the perpetrator otherwise meticulously paid attention to cleanliness and left no traces. The murder of Petra Schönfeld also does not fit into the scheme of the other three murders. But it may also be planned again to confuse the investigators.
The situation comes to a head when Odenthal finds out that the perpetrator was in her apartment and has left a photo there. So she has to assume that he's after her too. When Klingspohn is picked up, he denies having anything to do with the murders. Before the investigators can deal with him further, they surprised forensic technician Becker with the news that he had found DNA traces of Brenner on the bag in which the clothes on the "Emma" were. Confronted with these facts, Brenner breaks in and admits to having the police maid Petra Schönfeld, who “treated him like the last idiot”, suffocated in the affect with the bag. But it was an accident because he just wanted to scare her with the bag when he happened to meet her in the club that evening. He has nothing to do with the other murders.
Odenthal wants to ask Daniel Tretschok who knew everything about the “Emma” route plan. She has to find out that he has a very strong interest in the status of the current investigation. From Klingspohn, who has since been arrested, she learns that Tretschok was the only one who knew that he had a criminal record. Tretschok had even got him the job on the "Emma". The inspector discusses with her partner Kopper and comes up with the idea that Tretschok - if he is the wanted one - may have observed the murder of Petra Schönfeld and only then made the decision to kill himself. In this way he was able to secure items of clothing from the first victim and the bag in order to later use them as evidence of a " pawn sacrifice " for which he had chosen Klingspohn. While they are still pondering about it, Tretschok has chosen a new victim and presented it in a similar way to Andrea May. This time it's Claudia Bühler, a woman with whom Odenthal jogged relatively regularly.
While Kopper has Tretschok under observation, Odenthal talks to his wife. She confronts her with her suspicion that her husband is a multiple murderer. You could help stop him from killing again. Birgit Tretschok doesn't want to hear about it, however. Her husband suffered all his life from his dominant mother, who always oppressed and humiliated him. It turns out that Tretschok did not kill for the first time until after his mother's death, and that all victims resembled his mother in appearance and habit. While Odenthal is talking to Birgit Tretschok about it, Daniel Tretschok joins them and brutally knocks Odenthal to the ground. He puts them on his diving bell ship , which already belonged to his father and on which he killed the two previous victims and wrapped them in foil. Kopper and Schönfeld follow Odenthal's trail and try to free her, which Kopper manages at the last moment by shooting Tretschok.
background
The film was from Southwest Broadcasting in collaboration with Maran film under the working title commuters produces and in Baden-Baden and at the port of entry of Mainz rotated. The Carl Straat of the Duisburg-Rhein Water and Shipping Office was used for the recordings on the diving bell ship.
The premiere took place on July 1st at the Arsenal cinema in Berlin.
reception
Audience ratings
The first broadcast of Hauch des Todes on August 22, 2010 was seen by a total of 7.0 million viewers in Germany and achieved a market share of 23.0 percent for Das Erste .
criticism
Rainer Tittelbach from tittelbach.tv writes appreciatively: "Even if Hollywood is the better playground for serial killer thrillers than the 'crime scene' [...] and the German southwest seems a bit silly as a place of sick serial killer fantasies, 'breath of death' is but more than a passable crime thriller that keeps its tension and also provides a few moody moments. [...] The gaudy TV-movie-like staging of this misogynist thriller by Lars Montag [...] with crane drives and the roar of sounds seems a little intentional, but fits the genre. "
Tilmann P. Gangloff judges: “'Breath of Death' is the fiftieth case of Lena Odenthal and a worthy anniversary piece: The film is cinema for television. [...] Jürgen Werner's cleverly constructed complex script is very careful, especially in the details. […] [There are many] traces that the forensic technicians find and that repeatedly lead the investigators astray. [...] The dramatic finale [...] is a real high point anyway and compensates for the fact that Montag and Werner reveal the identity of the murderer after an hour and that his motif has not been particularly original since Alfred Hitchcock's thriller 'Psycho' at the latest. "
At Stern.de 'Hauch der Todes' is criticized by Ulrike Klode and she says that this 'crime scene' is “overloaded with symbols, a visual language that is not uniform and an action that is somehow confused and at the same time too easy to see through . […] In the first few minutes you can see the inspector through the viewfinder of a camera. But instead of maintaining the image of surveillance, this perspective never reappears later. Another setting is consistently applied: algae moving in greenish water. This image appears eight times in the 90 minutes, but in its blurriness and color scheme it doesn't really match the rest. Simply out of place, as if someone wanted to do film art here, but didn't dare to do it for the rest of the film. [...] This 50th Odenthal thriller shows: An anniversary thriller does not have to be trimmed to something special. A clearly told story with no frills would have been a better choice. "
Josef Seitz at Focus online sees the whole thing in a much more positive light and says that this crime scene “is much better than the title suggests. [...] And indeed: What Germany's most successful TV crime series usually forgets, this time works perfectly - between all the side stories there is actually a criminal case. "
At faz.net Dieter Bartetzko states: “So there is a human, sometimes drastic, sometimes touching, in this 'crime scene'. But the focus is on the disturbance, the sick soul of a serial killer and the fears he kindles in his fellow man. Even if the idea of showing such depth psychological phenomena by means of a diving bell appears to be tough: the images that this crime scene leads to are sometimes deeply unsettling. Sometimes in quick swirling sequences of images and cuts, sometimes in slow motion, he shows the familiar world from perspectives that make it frighteningly strange, full of pitfalls, false floors and wrong ways. The fact that the logic of the action sometimes gets mixed up underneath, that some symbolism are applied too thickly, does not bother much - which nightmare adheres to the laws of reason? "
The critics of the television magazine TV-Spielfilm write about this crime scene: “The story, which is both transparent and abstruse, cannot be saved even with visual handicrafts. [Conclusion:] Argh over-engineered and hardly exciting. "
Web links
- Breath of death in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Summary of the plot of Breath of Death on the ARD website
- Breath of death at the crime scene fund
- Breath of death at Tatort-Fans.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Production details and audience rating at tatort-fundus.de, accessed on March 17, 2014.
- ↑ Premiere ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at Kino Arsenal at deutsche-kinemathek.de, accessed on March 17, 2014.
- ^ Rainer Tittelbach film review on tittelbach.tv, accessed on March 17, 2014.
- ^ Tilmann P. Gangloff : Critique of the film on Kino.de , accessed on March 17, 2014.
- ↑ Ulrike Klode A serial killer doesn't make a good crime thriller ... on stern.de, accessed on March 17, 2014.
- ↑ Josef Seitz ola rennt - beyond the 50th on focus.de, accessed on March 17, 2014.
- ↑ Dieter Bartetzko Im Rausch der Tief on faz.net, accessed on March 17, 2014.
- ↑ Short review on tvspielfilm.de, accessed on March 17, 2014.
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