2024-04-16 14:55:20
There are supposed to be people who fundamentally reject zoological gardens. They could say goodbye at this point and move on to less bloody things. The following takes place exclusively in predator enclosures. A predatory enclosure filled to the limit with serious criminals.
So that everyone really notices this, “Crooks”, the new German Netflix series by Marvin Kren, starts in the Berlin Zoological Garden. Kren knows about human big cats like no other filmmaker.
He invented “4 Blocks,” which was set in a fairly extensive criminal biotope called Kreuzberg for three seasons. For his new eight-part series, Kren not only left his previous habitat (“Crooks” takes place in Vienna, Berlin and Marseille). In the enclosure of his wild mouse of history, it is no longer just Berlin clan criminals who are at each other’s throats, but rather Russians, Italians, Maghrebs, Serbs, Austrians, French and Germans.
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But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. In the Berlin Zoo, where it all begins, Charly innocently goes for a walk. With his son and his wife. She’s a veterinarian. When the son gets bored, Charly, a locksmith and highly talented safe cracker in early retirement, breaks into the lions and tigers and panthers.
A beautiful spotted big cat is looking for his closeness. She’s understimulated, says Charly’s wife, who should know something like that. In the case of Charly, this can hardly be discussed afterwards. He is forced to open a safe that is said to contain millions of euros, but above all there is a golden coin that was stolen from a Berlin museum by an Arab clan.
The break goes wrong. Shots are fired. Blood flows. Charly – including a Viennese stunner of a driver – has more predators on his heels than a pistol has bullets (Russians, Italians, Maghrebins, etc.). He sends his family to live with a prison buddy in Marseille. But they’re not sure either.
The panther is being chased
It’s about brothers and heirs. There is wonderful insults and ugly violence. Kren is an excellent behavioral scientist, demonstrates the different ways in which organized crime is played, and lets Claude Sautet’s gangster classic “The Panther is Hunted” jump through the thousand bars of his action cage. Something goes off in there every ten minutes. Very little goes into depth.
Women are also present in the Krenschen large enclosure. He has carefully placed them in each of his sociotopes – there is Charly’s wife, there is the prostitute that Joseph loves, the drug lord of Marseille and a quite unusual policewoman. And they are even different than the average German woman in the men’s zoo, which is the genre – smarter, cooler, more mature.
That’s just enough to pass the Bechdel test (more than two women talking to each other and not about men). But it seems rather half-hearted compared to all the fascination with the consequences of excess testosterone on male behavior, which Kren just can’t shake.
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Of all people, an old master of German genre television is a decisive step further. His name is Lars Becker, he invented “Night Shift” and “The Good Cop” and he just turned 70. “The Robbery of Millions” starts off as if it were an apocryphal horseradish story.
Omar and Zlatko drive a cash-in-transit van containing eight million euros. They drive him into a forest. Whatever they have planned for the post-robbery period, of course – men are like that – goes wrong almost as soon as they have the millions in their hands. As a result, Zlatko ends up shot on the van and in jail, while Omar runs off to Brazil. The two of them are, which is really not easy, even a bit stupider than Kren’s criminals are.
Haifa Abdallah (Innaam Wali al Battat) and Malaika Abdallah (Sabrina Amali)
Source: ZDF and Thomas Leidig
Which Becker doesn’t hide at all. He’s much more interested in the cunning women who, after the million-dollar robbery, now have to somehow survive under difficult conditions (frequent visits from two helpless but smart BKA investigators). And on which Omar and Zlatko, in their greed, have not wasted a second of their hormone-addled existence. Their names are Haifa and Malaika and Chantal and Dunja. Are their mothers, their wives (Omar has two, one is newly pregnant).
They do it in a laundry (money laundering, whitewashing, great idea!). They’re trying to get their boys out of jail and get their hands on the money at the same time. Because she has messed up life so far. Although they are resourceful, life has taught them survival. Haifa, Omar’s mom (the divine Inaam Al Batta), for example, discovered voice acting in addition to laundry.
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Because the film studios are afraid of shitstorms when dubbing and only let Arabs speak Arabs. Haifa is now the main character in a new awesome series. Her name is Farah Dibah. She’s Persian. But nobody cares. In the studio.
This sort of thing happens more often. Becker plays with actualities and with roles and with clichés so that it is a real splendor. Still a transition story. We are waiting for “Million Heist 2”. In which Haifa and Malaika and Chantal and Dunja and their lawyer make a break and finally make the men look as stupid as they really are in the genre. Deconstruction can really be liberating.
#Action #television #future #German #thriller #female