A fratricidal war in the house of Datviani? Settling scores among rival mafia families? When Bibi Fellner (Adele Neuhauser) and Moritz Eisner (Harald Krassnitzer) inspect a corpse in front of a desolate industrial building, the motive seems ambiguous, but the case can be solved. The evidence is promising. "For once, the right person was caught." "Somehow he looks smaller, doesn't he?" The pity of Fellner and Eisner is limited.
Career criminal Luka Datviani (Temiko Chichinadze) was shot dead in front of one of the clan's nightclubs after an argument with his brother Beka (Lasha Bakradze), the mastermind of the family business. Beka, apparently shaken, promises full cooperation.
The white-collar crime department at the Vienna BKA also contributes findings from two years of observation of the clan and its criminal activities. Investigator Eva Brunner (Zeynep Buyrac) reports on money laundering, illegal real estate transactions and involvement in politics. Cooperation on tiptoe is required, because they don't want to let the datvianis go up yet. It soon becomes clear that optimism was premature, and the witnesses are stonewalling. Brother Beka is the perpetrator, instead of Luka he wanted to use daughter Tinatin (Mariam Avaliani), the woman for the rough, as governor, son Irakli (Vladimir Koneev) should go away empty-handed. But evidence?
It cannot be proven. And Vienna is not Chicago. As is well known, Al Capone had been tricked there because of the tax. In Austria, according to Fellner, this is an absurdity: "Who cares about a financial crime in our country?" Amid such sneering and political leaders, along with references to real scandals, the first half hour of "Tatort" remains exciting. Before it gets even more exciting. Now the case expands into a twisty thriller about an informant and a moral image about trust, loyalty and betrayal, in which Moritz Eisner is morally affected.
Azra gets into the inner circle of the clan
When nothing seems to work, Eisner presents Azra (Mariam Hage) to the surprised Fellner. As an undercover investigator, Azra is a bouncer for the Datvianis, works for the white-collar crime department, and was once recruited by Eisner. The parents are junkies, the brother dead, she is apparently determined to prove herself. With Eisner's help, Azra gets into the inner circle of bodyguards of clan chief Beka. During a nocturnal mission with Eisner, connected by radio as if with an acoustic umbilical cord, she searches the villa of the Datvianis. The contact breaks off, Azra remains missing.
"Crime scenes" that deal with clan crime are often self-runners in terms of suspense, but the good ones among them tell of relationships at the same time and without further ado. Both within the structures of organized crime and externally, to the police. Loyalty and betrayal are more decisive here than violence, which appears to be a means to an end.
ORF's "Tatort: Azra", whose screenplay was written by Sarah Wassermair (directed by Dominik Hartl), is also complex and multi-layered. Ioan Gavriel's cinematography shows the places of the Datvianis as humanitarian-abandoned glass-and-steel nocturnal structures, with cold light and vanishing lines drawn as if with a ruler. In contrast to the dramatic Berlin mafia "Tatort: The Girl Who Goes Home Alone", the last one with Meret Becker and testimony of a great prevented love, in "Azra" everything is a bit smaller, more humane, more everyday. The joke that suits the policeman at the beginning of this "crime scene" is also a human response to the exorbitantness of the murder of a human being.
The risk of exposing Azra, to which Eisner reluctantly agrees, is killing him morally. Just like the last twist, in this "crime scene". Here, as in other critical situations, Eisner and Fellner seem as familiar as Philemon and Baucis. In dubious cases, you decide on the right thing, says another Viennese, and that's what these two do. What begins as a mafia thriller worth seeing ends up as a true moritat to the point.
Tatort: Azra, Whit Monday, 20.15 p.m., ARD