“Crime Scene: Cash”
Commissioner Pawlak’s blatant departure
Mutated from a cop to a gambler: Rick Okon in his last role as Inspector Jan Pawlak.
© WDR/Bavaria Fiction GmbH/Thomas Kost
In “Tatort: Cash” the Dortmund team takes care of murder cases in the betting mafia milieu. Inspector Pawlak himself is involved in the scene.
As the title suggests, a lot of cash is passed over the table in the new Dortmund crime thriller. But above all, in a memorable way, the “Tatort” career of Rick Okon (34) as Inspector Jan Pawlak comes to an end. After five years, he says goodbye to his colleagues Peter Faber (Jörg Hartmann, 54) and Rosa Herzog (Stefanie Reinsperger, 36) in his 13th case.
That’s what “Tatort: Cash” is all about
After the death of his colleague Martina Bönisch (Anna Schudt, 49), Inspector Faber returns to his regular working life with newfound stability. For now, however, he has to hand over the management of the team to Rosa Herzog, who has taken over the leadership of the Dortmund homicide squad as acting head. While he gets to work with fresh enthusiasm, Chief Inspector Jan Pawlak seems to have little interest in his job. Shattered by the custody battle over his daughter, he spends his time almost exclusively in the “Mutluluk” betting shop of his new friend Alkim Celik (Sahin Eryilmaz, 40). He is now owed 30,000 euros, but that doesn’t stop him from begging for more cash.
When Celik’s brother-in-law Lukas Becker (Linus Scherz, 27) is found murdered in his apartment, the family-run gambling den suddenly finds itself at the center of the investigation. In addition, after a few years, an old acquaintance of Inspector Hartmann’s comes into play again: the shady mafiosi Tarim Abakay (Adrian Can, 52), who appeared as an opponent of the “crime scene” investigator in 2012 and 2015, now appears to be on the scene In addition to drug and human trafficking, he also turned to the business of manipulated football bets. While Faber works alongside his colleague to finally bring down the notorious Ruhrpott crook, Commissioner Pawlak, who has slipped into corruption, is struggling to evade his fatal obligations to Abakay.
Is it worth turning on?
Yes. “Tatort: Cash” is a crime drama staged according to all the rules of the art, which makes its characters shimmer with psychological depth and comes up with some original punchlines. However, the actual case, which revolves around money laundering and manipulated football games, does not play a particularly important role. Rather, it provides the basis for dramatically staging Rick Okon’s farewell in his role as Inspector Jan Pawlak.
For this occasion, Jürgen Werner (60), the in-house screenwriter of the Dortmund “Tatort” series, once again packs everything into the story that makes up the core of the individual characters: Inspector Faber fights in a disciplined manner against his depressive-impulsive inner demons , which he gets to grips with surprisingly well in this episode. And Commissioner Pawlak is heartbreakingly failing in front of everyone because of the numerous fatal mistakes he has made in his professional and private life.
The focus in “Tatort: Cash” on these horizontal narrative strands and depth psychological aspects means that the actual criminal case is pushed into the background. Since there are almost only old acquaintances in the game, the story offers few surprises and is a bit stagnant for long stretches. Nevertheless, she gives Inspector Pawlak an original and worthy exit – even if it is clear after the last scene that there will be no happy ending for the character.