Zielfahnder - Flucht in die Karpaten (2016)

Liviu Caramitru, a member of a Romanian criminal gang operating across Europe, manages to escape from a Düsseldorf prison together with an accomplice. Their trail leads to Berlin, where police special units set their sights on one of Caramitru’s female helpers. She drives the escapees toward the Polish border. Although the accomplice is caught there, Caramitru manages to flee across the Oder into Poland. When an intercepted mobile-phone call locates Caramitru in Bucharest, Hanna Landauer and Sven Schröder, fugitive-tracking officers with North Rhine-Westphalia’s State Criminal Police Office, head to Romania. Landauer had dealt with Caramitru before: during an attempted arrest, he shot her former colleague and critically wounded him. She herself was so nervous that she could not shoot, and survived only because, by his own account, Caramitru’s sense of honor forbade him from shooting women. In Romania, Landauer and Schröder are sidelined by the local police. Their independent investigations into Bucharest’s nightlife end in a violent brawl, but lead them to the husband of Caramitru’s lover, who tells them that Caramitru is going to his hometown in the Carpathians for his sister’s wedding. On the wedding day, Landauer and Schröder are there with a large contingent of police. But when the man believed to be Caramitru is spotted and arrested, he turns out to be not the wanted man but his brother, Ion. The police assume that Liviu Caramitru knew they were there. And since the informant has also fallen to his death from his apartment in a high-rise, it seems likely that the results of the investigation are being leaked to Caramitru. In fact, Karl Vieth, head of the fugitive-tracking unit, discovers that Susanne Lorenz, secretary to North Rhine-Westphalia’s justice minister, is the leak. Her brother owed gambling debts to Romanian gangsters, and they had used this to blackmail her. After she is exposed, she takes her own life. After the failed arrest, the villagers invite Landauer and Schröder to the wedding celebration. The next day, Caramitru’s wife tells Landauer that her husband and his lover are staying in the mountains with a shepherd. Together with Florin, the only member of the Bucharest police still at the scene, and mounted mountain police officers, they set out to arrest Caramitru there. He opens fire on the police and, when he runs out of ammunition, tries to escape on foot. Landauer pursues him and catches up with him. During the struggle, she nearly falls into a ravine, but manages to grab hold of a bush. Caramitru pulls her back up, and at that moment one of the approaching police officers shoots him. As he is dying, he says, “In the end, you got me,” and kisses Landauer.