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Commissioner Peter Nadler (Bjarne Mädel) and his colleague Lansky (Katharina Schlothauer) are looking for the kidnapped Lisa.
Photo: Stephan Rabold / ARD
After all, people are smoking nice again.
This has meanwhile become a kind of trademark in the books and television plays of the super smoker Ferdinand von Schirach.
On television this has become so unusual that one would actually expect a hint in the credits that the dangerous smoking scenes were not inhaled: »No actor's life was endangered during the shooting.«
Klaus Maria Brandauer in the role of defense lawyer Biegler in Schirach's »Feinde«, the first so-called TV event of the new year, smokes fantastic.
Otherwise, it is about the kidnapping of a twelve-year-old girl and a police officer who tortures the kidnapper in order to find out where the victim is hiding and thus to rescue the girl alive.
The story is clearly based on the notorious real kidnapping case of the banker's son Jakob von Metzler in 2002, in which the then deputy Frankfurt police chief threatened the kidnapper with violence in order to find out the boy's whereabouts.
The perpetrator betrayed the hiding place, but the boy was already dead. The perpetrator was convicted, the police chief and the superintendent who threatened the kidnapper with violence were also given minor sentences.
Torture and threats of torture are strictly prohibited.
As recently in his drama "Nothing", in which the question of the impunity of assisted suicide was negotiated, Ferdinand von Schirach again presents a moral dilemma: the balance between a sense of justice and law.
The question: Is it really not allowed to torture anyone, even if it can save a child's life?
"Enemies" really do torture.
Inspector Peter Nadler, brilliantly played by Bjarne Mädel, subjects the man he has identified as the perpetrator to what appears to be a very professional "waterboarding" process.
He ties the kidnapper on a bench in the shower room, puts a wet rag on his face and pours water over it.
After a short time he learns the address of the girl's hiding place.
When the police arrive, the child is already dead.
Just unrealistic
In contrast to the »Tatorts«, which have been shown on this broadcasting slot for decades, the film does not focus on the investigation, but on the process afterwards.
First of all, it has an involuntary comedy, as Peter Nadler apparently convicts Georg Kelz (Franz Hartwig) as the perpetrator within seconds without any recognizable evidence.
Kelz is "vain," says Nadler.
Want to be more than he really is.
And even if Bjarne Mädel likes to be trusted with every stroke of genius and his Nadler is introduced as an enormously experienced kidnapping expert - the film doesn't even try to be plausible.
The fact that the ingenious investigator decides almost at the same moment that this man has to be tortured (and unfortunately does not receive any support from his colleague or the police chief) is simply unrealistic.
But we have to move on quickly because the lawyer Schirach is concerned with the process.
The trial of the torture policeman.
And in this part of the film, Brandauer and Mädel also get everything that can be played out of the material.
The inspector actually wants to hide the torture (strangely enough, the kidnapper doesn't say anything at first), the lawyer wants to convict him.
But now, while Brandauer and Mädel give everything, the film is falling apart completely.
First of all, we viewers have long known what has happened, so by no means follow the cross-examination breathlessly.
Still - and this is the decisive point - there is any moral conflict here at all.
Because even the most legally untrained viewer knows that torture is forbidden for good reasons.
By the way, we don't need to be so pushy with the Nazi era as a threat of disaster.
Torture is wrong.
Forbidden.
Wrong.
What else?
At the same time, roughly every viewer would call that inspector a hero who, disregarding the consequences for himself, does violence to a kidnapper in order to save the life of a kidnapped child.
Yes.
And that is forbidden.
And there can be no exception to the law.
What else?
All these certainties are certain before this film.
And then as well.
It's banal.
Boring.
No questions remain unanswered.
Again without meaning
And - as if you had noticed that at ARD yourself at some point, they obviously thought: Let's do it again.
From a different perspective.
And this other perspective is now running simultaneously in all third programs of the ARD and later also in the first and vice versa.
An all-round film on all programs.
And now it finally becomes absurd.
Because now the perspective of the torture victim is by no means adopted.
Or even pursues the thesis that the perpetrator is not the perpetrator at all.
Instead, we simply see essential parts of the first version again.
And in the middle this time we are a little more detailed with Klaus Maria Brandauer, the lawyer.
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But besides the fact that he gets a bit of trouble with his wife, as she is friends with the victim's parents, nothing is added to the drama.
The lawyer does his job.
Defend a suspected kidnapper.
And since he suspects methods of torture during questioning, he tries to prove them.
We have known for a good two and a half hours that he is correct in his assumption.
Otherwise, we don't know why, he has to see a doctor every now and then.
Which is nice because the great Samuel Finzi plays that.
He advises his patient to smoke less and ride bicycles more.
But since this is much more dangerous in Berlin than driving a car, Brandauer laughingly rejects this life-threatening advice.
We really couldn't have expected more dangers.
»Feinde« will run on Sunday, January 3rd from 8:15 pm on Das Erste, ONE and all ARD regional programs. More information at
daserste.de
.
Icon: The mirror
