This review was published when Tatort first aired on June 7, 2020. Now the case is repeated in the first, which is why we are republishing the text.
So it still exists, the crime scene without miscasting, “Let the moon stand in the sky” is one of those. Okay: maybe a miscast: the kitchen worktop. Sorry, but what kitchen surface for a family with two children between the ages of 13 and 17 is that crumb-free for days?
Apart from the clean kitchens, this Munich crime scene is pretty good. Of course, three camera shots don’t go by before you can already see the pool, without which obviously no Munich family can exist. But then it starts, and how. The screenwriters (Stefan Hafner and Thomas Weingartner) and the director (Christoph Schier) tell not just one story, but at least two. One story is a thankful clichéd crime thriller narrative: 13-year-old Emil Kovavic doesn’t come home in the evening, shortly afterwards his body is found in the Isar, his bicycle in a parking lot for anonymous sex. And the other story is a soft, silent narration in the background. One likes to follow her, which is also due to the Kovacic and Schellenberg families, which are brilliantly cast right down to the secondary characters. The fact that father Martin Schellenberg (Hans Löw) seems a bit phlegmatic and spoils his children quite a bit are the pleasant details that detectives Franz Leitmayr (Udo Wachtveitl) and Ivo Batic (Miroslav Nemec) come across.
Leitmayr and Batic have enough time for their “old married couple” type dialogues
Sure, maybe the two could have come up with the solution earlier. But then there would not have been memorable exchanges of words like the one when Ivo Batic exclaimed in the Schellenbergs’ hallway: “There’s a lizard”! Whereupon the house owner explains to him: “Yes, we have a lizard problem here” – pause – “they fall from the roof”. Is that still Munich, is that already Mallorca? Whoa, it’s gorgeous. In addition to the investigations, Batic and Leitmayr have just enough time for their “old married couple” type dialogues (“Have I told you that before? – “Hundred times!”) and colleague Hammermann (Ferdinand Hofer) sometimes feels like an eternity to get a rubber from to poke around on a poster roll.
Taking your time where there is time does not automatically mean boredom. This film manages without a bang, without the last false suspicion and turn just before the end. Nevertheless, he is exciting and mean as a dog. And then: frighteningly simple and quiet.
The first, Sunday, 8:15 p.m.