Crime scene: shadowless

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Episode of the series Tatort
Original title Shadowless
Country of production Germany
original language German
Production
company		 WDR
length 85 minutes
classification Episode 531 ( List )
First broadcast April 27, 2003 on Das Erste
Rod
Director Thomas Stiller
script Thomas Stiller
production Anke Scheib
music Peter Scherer
camera Peter Steuger
cut Horst Jaquet
occupation

Shadowless is a television film from the crime series Tatort . The film, produced by Westdeutscher Rundfunk and directed by Thomas Stiller , was broadcast on April 27, 2003 on ARD's first program. It is the 24th case of the Cologne investigative team Ballauf and Schenk and the 531st crime scene sequence.

action

Commissioner Freddy Schenk was privately involved in a bank when he witnessed an explosive incident. The bank customer Stefan Kühn stands in the middle of the room and asks to speak to the branch manager Treut. With quiet words and full of fear, he explains: "This is an attack." And refers to an explosive device on his body. Everything should go on as normal, and he demands three million. He appears to be connected to the kidnappers via radio. Schenk notices that something is wrong and comes out to the branch manager as a police officer. He gives Ballauf a phone call, who notifies the SEK and goes to the bank immediately. The SEK takes position and Ballauf enters the counter disguised as a customer. Kühn immediately senses that he is a police officer and loses his nerve. He shouts loudly: "Why are the police here, now they know that the police are in the bank ........" and shortly afterwards an explosive device detonates in the small newspaper kiosk in front of the bank. Horrified, Ballauf runs out of the building because he knew that there was a little girl standing there, which he now finds lying on the floor and rushes to an ambulance. Schenk is still in the bank and has to stand by and watch as a masked man enters the counter and shoots around at random. The money should be there in thirty minutes, otherwise a hostage would die every ten minutes. When the branch manager said it couldn't be done that quickly, the masked man immediately shot him.

When the money is handed over, both men also leave the bank with a child hostage, so that the SEK cannot intervene and they can flee. Ballauf and Schenk take over the chase and have to see how a sudden police check on the highway puts the hostages in danger. Shortly afterwards, they find the getaway car and the boy unharmed. Stefan Kühn lies unconscious on the floor and is given medical care by the ambulance service. Before he is taken to the clinic, he asks that someone take care of his wife. Ballauf is upset that they fell for the bogus police check and the perpetrator was now able to flee unhindered.

Schenk goes to Anna Kühn, who reports that strangers kidnapped her husband in the middle of the night. Schenk notices that the house is secured almost like a high-security wing with surveillance cameras and alarm systems. Kühn is a wealthy entrepreneur to whom his wife is very important. When Ballauf informed him that the branch manager Treut and the girl had survived, he seemed relieved.

The next day, Ballauf and Schenk visit Stefan Kühn again, who has meanwhile been released from the clinic. He is the only one who can give them clues about the perpetrators. Kühn assumes that there must have been three men. His wife was drugged and would not have noticed anything more. After he was detonated, he would have done anything the men asked him to do. The monitoring systems at his house had to do with the fact that he had to make relevant negative experiences abroad, which would have shaped him accordingly. The investigators take some recordings with them for evaluation. During the review, Ballauf noticed that the men who broke into Kühn's house had to be professionals. They moved "shadowlessly" like their own people from the SEK. His feeling tells him that something is wrong. Franziska can find out through a friend that the BND must have Kühn in its files. When Ballauf wanted to clarify this, he was rejected by the BND.

In the meantime, Lars Gessner's body is found in the forest, whom someone suffocated with a plastic bag. With the help of the boy who was taken hostage, Gessner can be clearly identified as the perpetrator from the bank. Traces at the crime scene point to two other people and fingerprints on the bag lead to a suspect. When the investigators want to arrest him, he is on the run.

Branch manager Treut, who obviously has a relationship with Anna Kühn, desperately wants to speak to her, but she lets him understand that their relationship has ended. He thinks it is possible that her husband has discovered their relationship. He unintentionally witnesses how Kühn digs a hole in the forest and is about to murder two men. Kühn is extremely upset that the two killed Gessner, which endangers his whole plan. In addition, he is now being blackmailed by Treut. He wants the money from him for the robbery, otherwise he would betray him.

Franziska can find out that Gessner was a kendō expert. Inquiries from the investigators at a relevant club reveal that Gessner often trained here with Stefan Kühn. So both have to know each other, which would prove that Kühn was behind the kidnapping himself. Since Ballauf did not escape the fact that Treut has a relationship with Kühn's wife, it is now clear to the investigator that Kühn has lied to her the whole time and that he only wanted to get his rival out of the way in the bank robbery, which not only failed , but also got massively out of hand.

In their search for Kühn, Ballauf and Schenk also find out about the extortion and can barely prevent Kühn from killing Treut as well. Both are arrested.

background

Shadowless was produced by Colonia Media on behalf of WDR . The shooting took place in Cologne and Düren .

Director and screenwriter Thomas Stiller can be seen in a small supporting role as a forester.

reception

Audience ratings

When it was first broadcast on April 27, 2003, the episode Schattenlos was seen by 9.35 million viewers in Germany, which corresponded to a market share of 26.80 percent.

Reviews

tittelbach.tv says: "The whole thing is heavily photographed, full of unexpected excursions, is exciting, although not always transparent."

At Kino.de , Tilmann P. Gangloff comes to the conclusion: “Stiller tells his thriller almost in a distant manner. He barely indulges the married couple in particular: Not a single close-up interrupts everyday life, which is alienated by marriage. In any case, Stiller cuts extremely rarely. For example, he shows interrogations in long shots, [...] so that this 'crime scene' from Cologne is anything but an off-the-peg thriller. "

The critics of the television magazine TV Spielfilm judge: "Good start, solid thrill, cool ambience."

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Location and audience rating at fundus.de, accessed on October 23, 2014.
  2. ↑ Locations at Internet Movie Database , accessed October 23, 2014.
  3. ^ Rainer Tittelbach : Film review at tittelbach.tv, accessed on October 23, 2014.
  4. ^ Tilmann P. Gangloff : Film review at kino.de, accessed on October 23, 2014.
  5. ↑ Short review at tvspielfilm.de, accessed on October 23, 2014.
previous episode
April 21, 2003: The Whipping Boy 		Crime scene follow next episode
May 11, 2003: Out of Control