Status: 14.01.2024, 19:54 PM
By: Katja Kraft
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Understanding each other better than ever: Christopher Komann (Robin Sondermann, right) celebrates his colleague "Rocko" Andersen (Oleg Tikhomirov). © Thomas Kost/WDR
Cologne's new "Crime Scene: Pyramid" delves deep into the world of windy finance. But you can rely on Schenk and Ballauf. Our ARD "Tatort" review.
This "crime scene" demands strong nerves from the audience. For this, the makers around director Charlotte Rolfes and the screenwriters Jan Martin Scharf and Arne Nolting don't need a lot of fake blood or spectacular chases. The milieu into which they take us in the new Sunday evening crime thriller "Pyramide" from Cologne is nerve-wracking enough. This testosterone-saturated financial world, in which everyone is hungry for big money – and not just literally walking over dead bodies for it.
Cologne's new "Crime Scene: Pyramid" shows the windy world of finance
"Superfucking profitable" are the products that his investment firm sells, Christopher Komann (Robin Sondermann) promises all new employees. Sondermann succeeds in transforming himself into exactly the kind of guys who trick complex minds into following them like puppets with pompous words and a fat lifestyle displayed. Smooth, sporty, well-groomed; Komann is of unscrupulous arrogance. You can believe that an insecure guy like Andrè Stamm (Rouven Israel) lets himself be lulled by someone like that. And joins a Ponzi scheme in which only one person stays dry: the boss. All others are swept away ice-cold.
A strong Cologne "Tatort" - with a hammer-hard ending
Rolfes has divided her crime novel, which is well worth seeing, into several chapters – from the temptation to the doubly tragic ending. In order to trace in flashbacks how it is possible that Stamm, who was still skeptical about the almost non-existent fixed salary when signing the employment contract, allows himself to be drawn further and further into the high-risk business and even sells his grandmother for it. Andrè is blinded by confidants such as Robert "Rocko" Andersen (Oleg Tikhomirov), to whom "Rocko" pats encouragingly on the back: "There aren't many great opportunities in life, but this is definitely one of them."
This Cologne crime thriller is reminiscent of Youtube videos
Many such phrases are used. This is not a weakness in the script – but hits the tone of real, self-proclaimed motivational coaches, who on YouTube, for example, write their crude "How to become a winner!" slogans into the world. It's nice how the usual unagitated "Tatort" detectives Ballauf (Klaus J. Behrendt) and Schenk (Dietmar Bär) are not at all impressed by this. For example, when Komann provokes them during the investigation: "I can tell you're not the 'hungry guys'" - the old hands in the business only counter dryly: "No, we're the guys who have a case to solve." In the end, its resolution is hammer-hard. Of all things, the one who is not greedy and venal loses. And the real criminal laughs his head off. This, too, is unfortunately very close to real life.