After only four cases, the “police call” investigator Elisabeth Eyckhoff was promoted to the Munich homicide squad. In her first case at the Kripo, she is not only concerned with a tricky interrogation – but also with her male colleagues.
Munich – Two brutally beaten women, two horrific crimes, one survivor: The Munich “Polizeiruf 110” deals in an unusual way with the case of a suspected serial offender this Sunday (8:15 pm).
But this time it’s not a classic “who was it?” Story. Because the suspect is certain from the start: From the investigators’ point of view, student Jonas (Thomas Schubert) has such a strained relationship with women that he stabs them with a knife at regular intervals. One of the victims bleed to death in the Isar floodplain, another barely survived the attack in a dormitory in the Munich student city.
But the investigators do not have much more than the very urgent suspicion that Jonas could be the culprit. Weak evidence, strong feeling, no evidence whatsoever. The title of the Sunday crime thriller is “Until midnight” because Elisabeth “Bessie” Eyckhoff (Verena Altenberger), who has just been promoted to the homicide squad, has just as long to persuade the student to make a confession. Because afterwards they either have to arrest him or let him go – and without a confession, the criminal investigation department simply does not have enough in hand to send the young man into custody.
This film is based on the case description “Lust” from the book “Abfalls: When People Become Murderers” by the legendary Munich detective Josef Wilfling, who was most recently head of the murder commission and who investigated the murder of Rudolph Moshammer, among other things.
In her new case, Commissioner Eyckhoff is following in Wilfling’s footsteps, as she is the new one on the Munich homicide squad. As such, she not only has to assert herself against the highly intelligent, strategically thinking suspect, but also against her male colleagues, who doubt whether the new one is the right one for this important and complicated job. And against the boss, who puts these doubts into action and puts the experienced investigator Josef Murnauer (Michael Roll) at her side. Murnauer had already bitten his teeth on the suspect years ago, had to let him go and thus made the attack in the student city possible in the first place. So it’s not just a crime story, it’s also one of free swimming. In a sense, the Commissioner hears herself freely.
But these two levels are not enough to turn the film into an emotional, exciting or even nerve-wracking chamber play – even though former director Dominik Graf was at work here. Unfortunately, “Polizeiruf 110” does not manage to develop a similar pull as the strong Netflix production “Criminal” about interrogations with the police, on which the film seems to be based. dpa
