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Inspector Ballauf (Klaus J. Behrendt) with a suspect (Mido Kotaini): A slightly different mobster story
Photo: Martin Valentin Menke / WDR
At the end, the old landlady of the neighborhood bar Hugo's Eck placed two shot glasses on the counter.
Inspector Schenk waved him off: "We're on duty." The landlady shakes her head: "These aren't for you." Then the landlady downed the schnapps and confessed that she had killed the son of a powerful delicatessen.
The Cologne “crime scene” told a slightly different mobster story on Sunday: It was about a German clan that traded in food and, like a mafia, had brought an entire district under its power.
Manfred Zapatka plays the nefarious head of the family who, Godfather-style, played the good or the angry.
As a subplot, the gay drama of the dead mafia son unfolded in flashbacks - similar to the one we saw about a Turkish clan in the Berlin »Tatort« for two weeks.
In our review we wrote: »Isn't there a little, mean, offended godfather in all of us?
It's a nice shoot how the filmmakers let the emotional grammar and the economy of violence of the classic mafia drama in German medium-sized companies come to fruition.
The godfather, patriarch and tormentor here is the German grocer, who keeps his partly migrant environment in check with mini-loans and extortion.
That may be a steep premise from a sociological point of view, but in the end there is a solid and sentimental milieu thriller;
Classic hits by Alexandra, Salvatore Adamo and Katja Ebstein included.«
We gave 7 out of 10 points.
What do you think of the thriller?
Another Cologne "crime scene" is currently being shot, it's the 89th by Schenk and Ballauf's team.
The screenplay is again by Paul Salisbury, who also wrote the current Cologne mafia episode.
The new "crime scene" is entitled "Des other's last" and is about the murder of a courier driver during the run-up to Christmas.
cbu
