TV crime thriller: “Verblendenung”: Stuttgart’s “Tatort” is gripping popcorn TV

Just a few scenes, short cuts, then the shot is fired. Can that really be? Did the Stuttgart “crime scene” detective Bootz get caught after dozens of investigations? And then, of all things, in a cinema seat and not during a wild shootout in the backyard?

The new “Tatort: ​​Verdeldung” (Sunday evening, 8:15 p.m., Das Erste) doesn’t bother with banter.

The SWR crime thriller gets straight into the excitement. Because instead of a cozy evening at the cinema, Sebastian Bootz ends up in a nightmare: a hostage situation, two ideologically blind perpetrators armed to the teeth, one dead, later more, explosives and a race against time.

These are the ingredients for the claustrophobic-seeming ARD drama. And certainly not for the faint of heart – that’s a forewarning.

The two heavily armed hostage takers chose the film premiere wisely: the guest list is politically populated, the state secretary of the interior minister is there, and the police chief is now also threatened.

The hostage takers are demanding the release of prisoners from the Stammheim prison whose lives are allegedly in danger. She should not suffer the same fate as her fellow prisoner and like-minded person, who is said to have been poisoned in prison.

A “murder on behalf of the state”? The hostage takers see themselves as part of a “national resistance” against a government that is controlled by “globalists” and the “lying press”. Could they be right with their crude-sounding conspiracy myth? Or was everything completely different? Are the hostage takers themselves the victims?

Particularly drastic and above-average “crime scene”

Director Rudi Gaul and screenwriter Katharina Adler – both of whom have already recorded from the Stuttgart episodes “Videobeweis” and “Forgiveness” – stage a gripping real-time thriller with a suction effect that would definitely make you grab a popcorn bag in the cinema.

But also a political thriller that comes across as very drastic due to the topic of executions and the game of life and death.

The nerves of the hostage takers and victims quickly become frayed, and the hostages’ community of fate, which is immediately split, openly haggles over the next possible victim.

There are expected to be more executions every hour, while the crisis team is under pressure in an empty shopping center and the special operations team is preparing. Negotiate? Stalling? Can the constitutional state really allow itself to be subjected to blackmail?

Inspector Lannert has suspicions

Mistrust rules the conversations – in the cinema, where hostages rebel against politics, where rumors are twisted into facts, where people betray and where people confess. And with the police officers in the shopping center, some of whom suspect Bootz (Felix Klare) to be an accomplice of the hostage takers.

Lannert (Richy Müller) senses that there could be more to the hostage operation than the story about prisoners in fear of death. He feverishly researches the files and the prison, while Bootz does everything he can to ensure that the other hostages in the cinema don’t side with the conspirators.

This is popcorn TV with political and social relevance, with a fast narrative pace and with unexpected twists. And a “Tatort” episode that goes well beyond the classic ARD Sunday evening in all respects.