The “Tatort” from Stuttgart deals with clan crime

DThe fact that you want to crawl deeper into the sofa is a remarkable achievement by the actor Oleg Tikhomirov, who many will still know as the fearless train driver who was tortured to death in “Babylon Berlin”. The way he plays the aggressive Kazakh criminal Mikel in “Tatort” is reminiscent of a bottle of nitroglycerin that detonates at the slightest vibration. Mikel is the type of violent criminal who achieves nothing, no appeal, no threat, no rehabilitation. When he isn't cursing, kicking and spitting, he's calling for family unity, but only as long as everyone sticks to the mafia clan's rules.

Mikel's brother Alan (Nils Hohenhövel) seems a little more controlled, keeping the bully under control here and there like a predator. He's not a law-abiding person either. Together with their missing cousin Julia Ellinger (Caroline Hellwig), the brothers rob a jeweler – equally suspicious: also Kazakh. Julia's little brother David (Louis Guillaume) is crazy. Things get out of hand and there is a dead body in the end. As you can see, it's not a particularly original case.

Copied from reality without any discordance

Mikel and Alan are particularly interested in David's age below criminal responsibility: “If things get tough, then you're our joker. You're only thirteen, do you understand that? Everything is easy with you.” However, David's life is not that easy: his mother has moved to Spain, his father is in prison for manslaughter, and David's brother Theo died while racing. The grandmother, who needs care, is unable to look after her grandson, who is therefore placed in a youth center. There, Annarosa (Caroline Cousin), who is still quite young but tough, looks after David, whom she tries to raise into a self-determined individual after being removed from his “clan”. For now the only result is that the boy falls in love with his carer. All of this is copied from reality without any discordance.

The investigators Thorsten Lannert (Richy Müller) and Sebastian Bootz (Felix Klare) don't have to look long to track down the robbery-murder squad, because their pattern is known to the police. It's even more difficult for them to prove something to the members of the Maslov-Ellinger clan who provide each other with alibis, professionally remove traces and hire good lawyers. Lannert and Bootz identify David as the weak point in this criminal network, who clearly has a hard time bearing the burden of his involvement in the crime, if only because Annarosa convinces him not to let anyone, neither the “clan” nor the police force, use him.

But there is no way around it. The dynamic of this psychologically convincingly written and staged episode (written by Sönke Lars Neuwöhner; directed by Martin Eigler) consists of the long back and forth struggle between three powerful authorities for the soul of the sensitive boy. So the cousins ​​keep coming to his door and, supported by David's father, invoke the family honor. Lannert wants to persuade David to make a statement through honesty and kindness. The carer, who hates “the system” even more than the crime, tries to prevent this. If you refer the title “Torn” to Bertolt Brecht’s “The Caucasian Chalk Circle,” as is at least indirectly laid out in the plot, the true empathy was shown in letting the boy go.

The tension is not neglected either, because because there was a witness to the attack, the situation becomes dangerous. But the most intense impression is left by the lack of inhibition with which Mikel Maslov acts and the hopelessness in which David finds himself. Louis Guillaume expresses excellently what such a loyalty dilemma means for a personality that is not yet stable. It paralyzes. And yet, at the same time, David seems like a driven person who, when overwhelmed, makes decisions that in turn trigger major developments. The fact that Eigler relies on the very classic effect of letting the action continue several times in David's world of imagination, which is filled with hopes and fears, pays off atmospherically.

Unfortunately, there is a crunch in the framework twice, both times when there is an attempt to unnecessarily emphasize the socio-political relevance even more clearly. That Bootz, after social worker Annarosa's naive and excited anti-system speech – “This is how your system works: I'm just doing my duty”; “You are taking orders” – which immediately shakes his self-image (“We acted like gangsters”) seems very far-fetched. At least Neuwöhner noticed this too, so he had Lannert comment: “The social worker really got it into your head.” The other time, the unexpected tirade against the lethal bureaucracy that erupted from the forensic doctor Vogt (Jürgen Hartmann) (“Everything works here according to bureaucratic specifications, and in the end it ends up on my table.”

The consistent finale also makes up for it. Tikhomirov also makes another appearance here that makes your blood run cold. He can make even the prospect of a vacation sound like it means a straight path to hell. And that's it.

The Crime scene: Torn runs on Sunday at 8:15 p.m. on Erste.