Der Kommissar und die Wut (2020)

Heiner Jatzkowski, a luxury car dealer, receives a ransom demand but initially refuses to comply because he does not take it entirely seriously. His nineteen-year-old son Tim has disappeared, but Jatzkowski thinks the extortion attempt is a hoax. After the police begin investigating, Tim’s car is soon found. It had been blocking a private driveway in Zehlendorf and had to be towed away. Detective Martin Brühl questions the neighbors and quickly develops a theory: if someone like Tim Jatzkowski shows up in a residential neighborhood in the middle of the night in his Ford Mustang, disturbing people with the engine noise, there must surely have been someone who would not put up with it. The confrontation may have escalated, and the incident could have been disguised as a kidnapping to divert attention. So Brühl wants profiles compiled of all the residents of the street where the car was parked. During his initial questioning, one man had already caught his attention: Oliver Froeling, who had a fresh injury on his face. The evidence pointing to Froeling mounts when Brühl discovers that, a few months earlier, Froeling’s wife was run over by a speeding driver whose identity is still unknown. The detective realizes that Froeling must be full of rage and is likely to blame people like Jatzkowski, who sell such highly tuned cars, for sharing responsibility for the tragedy. According to research by Brühl’s colleagues, Froeling had tried to get a loan a few days earlier because he wanted to offer a very large reward to find his wife’s “murderer.” Independently of the police, Heiner Jatzkowski tries to find his son himself. Among the regular customers he supplies with tuned luxury sports cars, there are plenty with connections to Berlin’s criminal clans. They too follow the same lead as Brühl and consequently become interested in Froeling. By now, the police are searching Froeling’s home, but find nothing suspicious apart from a few bloodied gauze swabs. Just as Froeling is being questioned at the police station, a call comes from Tim to his father, telling him to bring the ransom money to the kidnappers immediately. This lends support to the theory of Brühl’s colleague Susanne Koch, who suspects that Tim has kidnapped himself because of his difficult relationship with his very domineering father. While Tim’s father is under surveillance on his way to the ransom drop-off, Brühl keeps on Froeling’s trail as well. But neither effort produces the desired result. The only explanation left to Brühl is that the kidnappers and the victim may have been working together. He turns out to be right, because Tim really had got involved with Froeling. Tim had actually gone to see Froeling that night to try to come to terms with himself, because Tim was the one who caused the accident and was responsible for Froeling’s wife’s death. He had found Froeling’s address and wanted to talk to him. But that never happened: when Froeling heard the engine noise, he rushed out of the house toward Tim’s car, immediately thinking of his wife. Without letting Tim say a word, he beat him until he was unconscious. After discovering that Tim was Jatzkowski’s son, Froeling came up with the idea of getting the money he needed for the reward he had planned. At the time, he had no idea that he already had the person responsible in his hands. He is surprised, though, that Tim is putting so much effort into obtaining the ransom money: while Froeling had to go to the police, Tim had collected the money on his own and now brought it to him. When Froeling empties the bag and sees that the bundles of cash are made of paper on the inside, he gets angry and decides he will make Tim’s father “bleed” all the more. His rage grows so intense that he chops off his own thumb to give the demand added weight. But Froeling says that enough is enough. Even after Tim confesses that he was the driver at fault, Froeling eventually calls Brühl to tell him where they can find Tim. Tim is rushed into emergency surgery and has taken all the blame upon himself. He says the kidnapping was entirely his idea and that he needed Froeling only as an accomplice. Brühl knows this is not true, but he passes the message on to Froeling anyway.