In the new Munich police call “Until midnight”, a confession must be made.
So many happy, partying, busting young people. After a year and a half of the pandemic, one flinches, but it is not the issue here. Rather, life, love, how beautiful. “They all look as if they were freshly in love,” says a voice from the off. Then: “They look happy.” It is the voice of Verena Altenberger, who was promoted as Elisabeth “Bessie” Eyckhoff to the Munich homicide detective during the crime scene and police call summer break. In June she was still looking for “Frau Schrödinger’s cat”, it was a somewhat confused “Police call 110”; now she’s about to get a tough case, it has to be cracked “by midnight”.
And there he is already sitting, the tough case, the intelligent psychopath is called Jonas. He says little, only says things like: “My relationships with women are quite normal.” It’s just not true, Bessie Eyckhoff and her colleagues are sure of that, the viewer is pretty sure of that too.
Tobias Kniebe, script, and Dominik Graf, director, shot one of the thrillers in which the aim is no longer to find the murderer, but only to convict him or bring him to a confession. But what does “only” mean: If Jonas Borutta does not confess by midnight, he will have to be let go because the evidence is insufficient. The minutes click away, who wouldn’t be nervous about that?
The “Commissioner” (Jonas, charming) is doing well, but in the opinion of her boss not well enough – or not fast enough well enough. So he decides to bring the former head of the homicide squad back on some kind of funeral leave; Josef Murnauer was sitting across from the pale and cold young man years ago and had to let him go.
Michael Roll plays this investigator, director Graf shows him as a lost old man, sitting around in the hotel where his daughter works. But then as someone who brings experience, who can therefore bring in peace. Murnauer and Eyckhoff get together, it comes to what is currently causing a sensation as Triell, in the variant two against one.
Dominik Graf keeps the thread taut (the minutes are ticking), uses the squabbling between the investigator and the investigators as a retarding element: there really is no time for that, one thinks. Murnauer would like to move to a cozy office because of the atmosphere. Borutta takes his sedative pills, which he seems to take every hour like drops. He insists on an apology (unfortunately he is given a reason, see for yourself). He knows his rights.
Thomas Schubert is Jonas Borutta, is squeamish, fidgety, but callous to the core. And it’s always the other’s fault. “In any case, women only want you to be normal” – he says this as if it were an entirely unreasonable wish. Nobody perceives it, nobody sees it. Someone like him is called incel today.
What begins as a duel, as a pure chamber or interrogation room game, opens up for other topics without appearing forced. For example for the topic: ambitious young women among men. Or that of police violence. Or, conversely, the frustration of the police about what they have to “clean up” day after day in the service of society. That’s quite a lot for 90 minutes.
“Police call 110: Until midnight”: ARD, Sun., 8:15 pm.
