“Tatort” from Cologne: The real mafia in the neighborhood looks different

VIt takes forty action-packed “crime scene” minutes before someone thinks of “the bad B-word”. And even then, Commissioner Freddy Schenk (Dietmar Bär) is still acting stupid: “What kind of B-word?” But even in the clique metropolis on the Rhine, one may have heard of bias before. And Schenk fulfills the conditions of this problematic fact one hundred percent. Together with his colleague Max Ballauf (Klaus J. Behrendt), he investigates a murder that took place in the restaurant of his daughter Sonja (Natalie Spinell), who has not appeared in the “crime scene” for a long time. Sonja’s partner Karim (Timur Isik), the actual owner of the “magic lamp”, whom Schenk initially treated aloofly, but in the heat of the investigative battle then uninhibitedly called “son-in-law”, is also one of the urgent suspects. Karim has no alibi, but a motive for anger, after all the burned dead man is apparently the arsonist who set the Persian restaurant on fire shortly before he was struck down. All this happened on the sidelines of a right-wing hooligan demo in the migrant district. Stubborn Schenk, upset as he rarely is, soon puts other residents of the neighborhood under pressure, including the dead man’s father.

This unprofessionalism is good for the film. Schenk’s involvement in the case is simple in terms of content, but emotionally told (Paul Salisbury’s book). Nina Vukovic’s concentrated directing also values ​​this more inward-looking, well-acted plot line. The father-daughter (granddaughter) relationship seems as intimate as it is precarious. We see people who have become so alienated that they no longer know whether they can still trust each other, but who still depend on each other. The darkened, backlit pictures by Julia Jalnasow, with a sunny background, go well with this. In times of need, the Schenk family gets closer again. As for the case itself, this “crime scene” episode shies a bit from reality. The “protective measures” mentioned in the title do not mean Corona regulations, but rather harsh extortion and the helpless attempts of the police to protect the victims. In fact, this is also a massive problem in Cologne. A few years ago, the local press reported that investigators estimated that every second restaurateur in the region paid protection money, but this was almost never reported. The problem particularly affects restaurateurs with non-German roots. Various clans (such as the Lebanese Al-Zein clan) are involved in this systematic extortion, as are the Italian mafia, organized Turkish criminals, the PKK and multinational biker gangs such as the Hells Angels or the Bandidos, which are now banned here.

The godfather is the delicatessen

Dominik Graf’s strong “Tatort” double episode “In the Family” two years ago realistically dealt with the violent mechanisms of Italian mafia networks. A similar look at the structures, which are often deeply rooted in the respective community, would have been possible here in order to show the hopelessness of the situation for the victims. Instead, the most unbelievable variant was chosen: The godfather in the Turkish-Persian-dominated quarter is the German delicatessen retailer Viktor Raschke (Manfred Zapatka), who doesn’t look too threatening. With his homophobic hooligan sons, who are obviously blinking to the right, he has set up a criminal help-yourself system in the neighborhood: money is lent in exchange for something in return; after that, the supported shops are then suddenly to be overwritten by Raschke, otherwise the sons will come to visit or a fire will be threatened. This is even more blatant than protection racket.

However, one of the sons died in the fire in the magic lamp, the other (Paul Wollin) is aggressive but not too bright. A beefy employee, the bouncer type, is also part of the team. Father Raschke now pays “blood money” in the neighborhood to find out who has his filius on his conscience. To show how cold-blooded he is, he theatrically cracks walnuts. As if they were bones.

Apart from the fact that this small-German mafia company is unlikely to be involved in organized crime for long, Salisbury has also included a subplot about a not too likely-seeming affection, which probably only serves to immerse the events in a completely different light. Sometimes less would be more, at least with surprising twists in the “crime scene”.

The multi-level resolution lives up to this word: Here the film dissolves into its components. All narrative threads should probably be brought to an end, without the inner coherence seeming to be particularly important. You can’t call it narrative delicacies. A magic lamp genie comes to the aid of the episode: the chemistry, as always, convincing between the protagonists who have been investigating together for 25 years. With their authentic serenity, Ballauf and Schenk have long been one of the most pleasant investigative duos on Sunday evenings.

Of the Crime scene: protective measures runs on Sunday at 8.15 p.m. in the first.