"It does play a big role that he's there." This sentence, which sounds somehow casually phrased, comes from an interview with Miroslav Nemec that he gave in the run-up to the recent "Tatort" in Munich.
He refers to colleague Burghart Klaußner, who in that case – it is the 91st of the duo Leitmayr and Batic and ran in the first yesterday evening – played the eponymous “Hackl”.
Nemec is correct.
And something of right.
Because the 73-year-old made a very special film with his acting skills from this crime thriller, which was based on a rather average script (written by Dagmar Gabler) and which was staged quite conventionally (director: Katharina Bischof).
BY STEFANIE THYSSEN
It was certainly tempting to turn this Johannes Bonifaz Hackl into an evil figure.
A puke in front of the Lord (which he, well, already is), an old, white man (which he is too), an ugly not only angry but hate citizen (also true) who despises everything and everyone.
Who, without batting an eyelash, insults Commissioner Batic as a "dirty Jugo" and behaves like a three-year-old terror child in the police station.
But Burghart Klaußner doesn't just play all that, he lets him be a human being, not just a misanthrope.
This attitude is reflected - which is a successful trick, by the way - by Commissioner Leitmayr (Udo Wachtveitl), who, if not sympathy, then at least has a touch of sympathy for the Hackl, even though he was so rough in the many years ago Finger bitten that the scar is still visible today.
"I like characters like that, lonely, rough-faced old men who aren't so tele-flexible," Wachtveitl recently said about the character Hackl.
And he plays this feeling wonderfully and touchingly.
In view of the concentration on Hackl, the case itself becomes a minor matter, which is bearable (that mother number at the end was really over!).
And the second seduction of this thriller hardly had a chance – namely the one of falling into the all-just-sad-in-the-skyscrapers-im-Hasenbergl cliché trap.
So all in all: Cheers to Hackl.
And the BR commissioners, who are still tele-smooth despite everything.