“Tatort” from Vienna
Alone against the mafia: an informant puts herself in great danger
Scene from the Vienna “crime scene”: Azra (Mariam Hage) has been smuggled into the closest circle of the Georgian mafia as an informant in order to help solve a murder case.
© ORF/Felix Vratny / ARD Degeto
A clan chief’s brother is shot. Moritz Eisner knows the informant who was smuggled into the mafia. He asks Azra to convict the culprit – but doing so puts himself in great danger.
- 4 out of 5 points
- Captivating crime thriller with a great leading actress and a surprising ending
What’s the matter?
“In the back, really? In the back, brother?” At the beginning, a high-ranking member of the Datviani clan is shot dead in Vienna. The police get a tip from an informant that it was their own brother, mafia boss Beka Datviani (Lasha Bakradze). However, since all clan members stick together, they cannot prove it. Moritz Eisner (Harald Krassnitzer) knows the smuggled V-woman Azra (Mariam Hage) – and encourages her to get closer to the godfather. The plan works: Azra is promoted to the bodyguard. But then Eisner and Bibi Fellner (Adele Neuhauser) hear nothing more from her…
Why is the case “Azra” worth it?
Mafia movies are usually male-dominated: high-brow bosses protected by muscular hunks. This “crime scene” (book: Sarah Wassermair, director: Dominik Hartl) shows that there is another way: clan boss Beka Datviani prefers his intelligent daughter Tinatin (Mariam Avaliani) to his testosterone-controlled son and brother. And in the circle of his bodyguards he gets the tough Azra, brilliantly played by Mariam Hage. The daughter of a Serb mother and a Lebanese father not only impresses with her martial arts, she also has a formidable command of the Viennese street dialect. Hage alone is worth turning on.
What bothers?
What really happened on the night of the murder? And who is actually spying for whom here? The viewer gropes in the dark about all this for so long that he threatens to lose track of things from time to time.
ARD crime thriller
“Tatort”: The highlights from 1000 episodes
The commissioners?
For Moritz Eisner, the case is personal: he is the one who recruited Azra as an informant and feels a special responsibility. However, he does not always play openly with his friend and colleague Bibi Fellner.
Turn on or off?
This “crime scene” is exciting up to the last minute – tune in!
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