EIt’s supposed to be a relaxing trip in the sun. A dream holiday with friends, three long-term couples and their six children. Booked is island feeling, professional hospitality of the upper category. The aim of the group is a spacious hotel complex on Tenerife with a pool area that can hardly be overseen.
On the first day, people rave about how easy it is to get lost in all the aisles, the shortcut routes, behind the scenes of this beach-facing resort for hundreds of tourists. Disorientation is program. The resort is secured towards the beach with a gate system that can only be opened with a key card. Security personnel can be seen. You can let the kids run. What is supposed to happen under this blazing sun, in which the ocher-colored hotel complex, as if made of clay, not only conveys confidence, but also seems to be part of the timeless landscape design?
What’s going to happen?
For most of the twelve holidaymakers, there is already a lack of time and carelessness in the transfer bus. No one knows that chaos, hatred and violence will reign the following day. With dramatic, sometimes fatal consequences for everyone, families and individuals, and existence as a group.
After the terrorist attack on the beach near Sousse in Tunisia in 2015, in which 39 people died, including the assassin, security in holiday resorts open to the sea was also strengthened on the Canary Islands in the Atlantic. The feeling of security is the sine qua non of an all-inclusive holiday. Of course, fences and gates are of little use if an insider gives assassins access.
In the four-part genre mix of killing spree thriller and family drama “Crossfire – Death in the Sun”, a production for the BBC that shows ZDF in the “Montagskino” series, the horror for the twelve travelers from Leicester begins the morning after their arrival. In the evening there had already been a nasty argument between ex-cop Jo (Keeley Hawes) and her husband Jason (Lee Ingleby). He humiliated her in front of the assembled group, was offended, and secretly questioned her loyalty. Rightly so. Shortly before the amok run of two armed violent criminals begins in aqua aerobics in the morning, Jo exchanges erotic messages with a member of the group. Then the sudden outbreak of violence, staged in disaster film style by Tessa Hoffe (director), Lauren Barès (camera) and Dermot Diskin (editing that depicts chaos admirably) based on the screenplay by Louise Doughty.
People flee in all directions
People in swimwear flee in all directions, are hit by bullets, reach dimly lit stairwells or underground car parks, storage rooms and seemingly endless corridors with doors that lead outside or into the trap. Some vacationers manage to escape, some get lost. No police far and wide. Jo’s daughter Amara (Shalisha James-Davis) meets gunman Flavio (Pol Sanuy); Mom Jo joins the hotel’s head of security, Mateo (Hugo Silva), who tracks down antique-looking guns. Together they search for their relatives, for those who are entrenched and the assassins, while the doctor Miriam (Josette Simon) saves lives in the kitchen wing and calms down her friend Abhi (Anneika Rose), whose husband Chinar (Vikash Bhai) is hiding with their three children. Miriam’s husband Ben (Daniel Ryan) loses the remaining children entrusted to him on the way to the sea.
Trailers
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“Crossfire – Death in the Sun”
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Video: ZDF, Image: ZDF and Dancing Ledge Production
“Crossfire” could, if only this narrative and time level played the main role and the relationships among each other, be a more than decent action thriller in “Die Hard” style. Honest popcorn cinema. But the four-parter wants more and thus achieves less. In the very first few minutes, the main character Jo ponders the phenomenon of time and its standstill via voiceover. Extended flashbacks, contrasting scenes in the eye of the storm, push themselves visually into the protagonist’s consciousness in moments of greatest panic. Memories of a New Year’s Eve party that marked the start of Jo’s affair and their holiday plans. Her feeling of not being brave enough as a police officer. Memories of a previous marriage. To the cowardice that her estranged husband Jason accuses her of. Before the next exchange of fire, Jo’s confidence in her own abilities and suitability as a heroine grows larger than life.
All in all, this seems less and less subtle and psychologically overloading. The blatant change of scene, the violence here, everyday life in Leicester there, doesn’t exactly help to keep the tension. The credibility says goodbye when Jason checks his wife’s affair Whatsapps in the hotel room, wishes his rival dead and the parallel montage then shows the murder of the man as ordered. In the end, “Crossfire” is no more suitable as a disaster film than as a revenant of “Scenes from a Marriage”.
Crossfire – Death in the Sun shows the ZDF today and next Monday at 10:15 p.m. in double episodes. Then available for four weeks in the ZDF media library.
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