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Fellner (Adele Neuhauser) and Eisner (Harald Krassnitzer) with suspect: Insomniac in Vienna
Photo: Petro Domenigg / ORF / ARD
In case you didn't know: crack is on the rise again.
At least that is what a dealer named Wave claims in this "crime scene", from whom the insomnia investigator wants to tap material in order to finally come down.
The current case is hard on the police officer: There is a murderer who kills prostitutes and kidnaps their little sons.
While the investigator is targeting the false suspects, the audience knows very quickly: A man with a wig and a pleated skirt is the culprit;
he chains the boys in different apartments and then plays the role of the loving mother, unconvincingly.
The conviction of the murderer is made more difficult because he himself seems to be a specialist.
In any case, he poses as a drug investigator to the investigators and thus intervenes in the investigation.
In between he throws in the substances that are popular in Vienna.
And as we know thanks to Dealer Wave, this is mainly crack.
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Eisner (Harald Krassnitzer) with Dealerin Wave (Sophie Aujesky): Crack on offer
Photo: Petro Domenigg / ORF / ARD
Coming down the way the Commissioner is trying to do is not possible with this film.
With sudden and abrupt bursts of energy, as reportedly evoked by the consumption of crack, Thriller drives forward.
Sleepless in Vienna.
Red light, black light, brothels, discos - Fellner (Adele Neuhauser) and Eisner (Moritz Eisner) drift through the night, while the man in women's clothes (Max Mayer) distributes Leberkäs rolls and sweets to the children with perverted care.
In one scene we see the would-be mother sitting next to one of the boys who is chained to the bed and saying in a soft voice: "Nothing is stronger than a mother's loving bond."
This "crime scene" does not pretend to reinvent the genre of the psycho killer thriller;
He dutifully refers to obvious role models such as Hitchcock or De Palma.
And even if the crime thriller temporarily adopts the murderer's perspective, it is not a study that penetrates deeply and unpredictably into the perpetrator's psyche.
The man's motivation remains nebulous, the plot lurches occasionally.
What is surprising and overwhelming, however, is the audiovisual will to form with which the creators unfold their old-school night piece.
The psychos on the heels
Screenwriter Mike Majzen was involved in the Sky series »Der Pass«, a smart, visually stunning Alpine remake of the Swedish series milestone »Die Brücke«.
Director Christopher Schier previously staged the sensational »Tatort« about bourgeois abysses on the outskirts of Munich, where he suggestively staged the characters between untamed nature and optimized living landscapes.
Therein lies the strength in Schier's new episode from Vienna: how closely he stays on the heels of his junkies, alkies and psychos.
The mood is sometimes overwrought like a bad drug trip, sometimes like a somnambulistic hangover that no antidote can dispel.
The strongest sequence, however, is probably the quietest that we have ever seen in a »crime scene«: After several attempts to overcome her insomnia have failed, Fellner receives a CD from Eisner: 88 minutes of the sound of the sea.
Fellner leans back in her chair and actually closes her eyes.
The refined: The sequence is structured like one of those now formalized »Tatort« passages in which the characters can be seen once again in their goings-on in the last third of the plot in a smooth sequence.
Here it is: Fellner, who counts sheep in front of the CD player.
Eisner rummaging through files in pale lamplight.
One of the boys who is tied up on the bed.
A prostitute who dances on the pole.
Normally a power ballad is played over such binding sequences in the »Tatort«, but here we don't hear anything other than the sea.
A wonderful counterpoint to the crack-intoxicated scenes: Come on, sweet sleep!
Rating:
8 out of 10 points
Scene of the crime:
"
The wet nurse",
Sunday, 8:15 pm, Das Erste
