Tod eines Mädchens 

This is a German television crime movie from 4 months ago. It consists of two 90-minute episodes and was a great success with audiences here scoring over 7 and then even over 8 million viewers. The last quote from the film is that the characters will see each other again, so a sequel may very well be possible, even if there is nothing known yet. And even if it isn't, Heino Ferch, the lead actor here, has his own crime series running strong. Apart from him, there are quite a couple other known German actors in here: Barbara Auer, Anja Kling, Rainer Bock, Hinnerk Schönemann, Nina Petri, Gustav Peter Wöhler... Especially Schönemann and Bock are favorites of mine and the former is a personal favorite of mine and with the many cop films he has going on, it's a nice change to see him as a different character for once and not in the police force. Ferch, Auer and Kling do not really have that much range in my opinion, but they are fine here. Especially Ferch was a positive surprise, even if I still believe he built his career more on charisma than on range. Auer is still fairly annoying early on when she keeps whining and sobbing all the time instead of investigating, but she gets better as the film goes on. Sadly, the same cannot be said about the movie in general. I felt the first 90 minutes were much stronger than the second. I'd say they were a 6 and the second half was a 4 out of 10. The ending of the first film was pretty nice with the illusion of the dead girl when Ferch is at the scene of the crime.

The filmmaker trio here is pretty experienced. One of the writer duo worked on "Bang Boom Bang" a long time ago and, more recently, on "Nicht mein Tag", two pretty well-known German films with theatrical releases. However, they also came up with lots of generic stuff in terms of the script here. Ferch's dark past, the female cop's son being in the center of investigation, stuff about pedophilia, cheating, assisted suicide, the worthless news reporter's storyline. It was maybe too much action and plot twists. I know they had to fill 180 minutes, but in doing so, occasionally, they left the realistic path and became slightly over the top in their developments and constantly changing suspects. The possibly worst thing about this film was when the female main character (played by Auer) says she wants to interrogate her own son and if that wasn't already enough, that is also exactly what she does. Literally, this was a horrible piece of writing. It would never have happened in real life with such a bond between the two characters and they basically could have practiced and faked that interrogation beforehand. Really the filmmakers sacrificed credibility for reasons of emotion here and that was way way too much.

Still, as a whole I believe this film was a success even if it gets worse in the second 90 minutes. At least in the first half, they also had me guessing who killed the girl and that is always a nice achievement to create curiosity in the audience. This certainly could have been much better still, but all in all I recommend it if you don't mind the long running time.