July 10, 3 Sat, 23:55
The film begins reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic dark comedy The Trouble with Harry (1955), but then the film turns into a crime thriller without losing its darkly humorous tone.
Lars Becker conceived his Night Shift crime novels more than twenty years ago. The signs change, but the quality always remains well above the television average. Sometimes the author and director conceive the stories as a comedy, sometimes as an action-packed thriller in the neo-noir style, but the plot of the films regularly differs from other crime works. “Long Live Death” is the 15th episode of the series’ television premiere in 2018.
This time the music sets the tone: especially for the first act, Stefan Wulff and Hinrich Dagefer chose a very relaxed lounge style, reminiscent of “heist films” such as “Ocean’s Eleven”. Films in this genre are crime comedies in the broadest sense and feature spectacular heists; The identified figures are robbers. However, the two anti-heroes who dominate the opening scenes of “Long Live Death” are only partially popular, and they initially do not want to steal anything, but rather, they do not want to get rid of something.
Furniture store king Johnny de Groot (Roland Koch) died in the arms of his beloved whore Zora (Almila Bagriacik), a death that most men supposedly dream of. Angelo and Claude (Frederick Lau, Muratan Muslu), the operators of the establishment, succinctly called “Sex House”, want to avoid trouble and get rid of the dead man as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, Zora raised the alarm in a panic, so employees of the permanent criminal service immediately appeared at the “Sex House”.
Without further ado, the two friends arrange for dead Johnny to be a drunken guest at a bar, and then take him into the woods. However, this is where the real problems begin: at first it seems like a casting gimmick that Roland Koch has chosen to play the corpse, but while the two demi-monde are still discussing each other, Johnny suddenly becomes bright again.
Angelo now shows his partner a trick that has probably never been shown like this on German television. They both have no idea that a bird song collector (Philipp Hochmayr) from nearby Hochstand recorded the entire event. It starts out reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic dark comedy The Trouble with Harry (1955), but then the film turns into a crime thriller without losing its darkly humorous tone.
Gradually, Becker brings other people into the game, all of whom ultimately have the same goal: they are convinced that Johnny has a lot of money hidden somewhere. At the same time, KDD employees are investigating a missing widow’s complaint: Anita de Groot (Natalia Werner) not only knew about Johnny’s regular visits to the sexy Zora, but also that her husband wanted to free the girl from her environment; just like he once did to her.
So, gradually all the participants arrive at the station: Anita and Zora, two brothel owners, an ornithologist, two creditors (Kida Khodr Ramadan, Prince Kuhlman) to whom Johnny owes a large sum, and, of course, the lawyer Angelo and Claude (Gustav Peter Wöhler). As men and women continue to bump into each other outside of the office, further complications arise, which for some people are fatal.
Besides the famous ensemble, which of course includes the members of KDD (Barbara Auer, Armin Rohde and, as a new member of the team, Tedros Teklebran), “Long Live Death” is especially impressive because of the ease with which Becker tells the story. While things happen that aren’t actually heard, the men engage in absurd conversations in the best Pulp Fiction style, with the appeal being the contrasting constellation of the respective pairings.
Lau and Muslu in particular are a lot of fun as would-be gangsters ripped off from the movies, especially since Angelo and Claude aren’t the brightest. Kida Khodr Ramadan and Prince Kulman are also an interesting duo, especially since it is always touching when scammers are outraged by the lack of morality of their clients.
Another funny thing is that when talking about a furniture croissant, people always talk about its advertisement, which is where the film begins (“We’ll lift you up”), although one of the interlocutors is always completely amazed that the other does not know the advertisement. The dialogue is always enjoyable, especially when it’s played by such great actors.