In “Tatort: The cold of the earth” (January 29, 8:15 p.m., the first), a man dies after a field match between hostile hooligan groups in Saarbrücken. Who gave him the fatal stab?
Saturday. Gameday. A Saar-Palatinate football derby keeps all the emergency services in Saarbrücken in suspense, including chief inspectors Leo Holz (Vladimir Burlakov, 35), Adam Schürk (Daniel Sträßer, 35), Esther Baumann (Brigitte Urhausen, 42) and Pia Heinrich (Ines Marie Western Ströer, 36). Because after the game, a death is reported from the emergency room. Andreas Schneider (Nils Bannert, born 1995) collapsed in the emergency room with skull fractures and a stab wound and could not be saved.
It quickly turns out that he spent the “third half” in a field match. But whether he also suffered the fatal injuries there remains unclear for the time being. Because as hostile as the hooligan groups are, they also agree that the biggest and common enemy is the police. Therefore, the Saarbrücken team encounters a wall of silence.
And Adam Schürk also conceals certain truths. However, when he is mugged at home because someone is looking for the millions from his father’s bank robbery, he has to let Leo Bäumer know. But who can trust whom here and who ends up on whose side remains unclear…
Yes. Hooligans, same-sex couples wanting to have children, paternity tests… This crime thriller mixes many challenging social issues and knits a somewhat contrived, but thoroughly exciting case out of it.
The battle scenes of the mass brawls between the alleged football fans who are ready to use violence and glorify violence are painful to watch. At the forefront is the young, constantly angry Alina Barthel. She is embodied by the Hamburg actress Bineta Hansen (24). The fact that her punches look so real is due to her career as a boxer; Hansen was German Junior Champion in 2013.
And once again, Daniel Sträßer plays Adam Schürk, who was abused as a child, tough and tends to be a lone fighter, with outstanding charisma. In an entertaining interrogation scene with a little girl, Schürk also shows that he’s not just dark. Let’s hope that it’s worth becoming a Schürk/Sträßer fan and that there won’t be any exits again soon with this generally rather younger team.
In the Saarbrücken crime novels, there is an exciting and very brutal horizontal storyline right from the start, which revolves around Schürk’s highly dramatic family history. It’s continued in the new “crime scene” – and at the end of the film, with the solution to the pocket puzzle, it even creates a real cliffhanger…
