"Winterherz: Tod in einer kalten Nacht" is a German television movie that premiered in late 2018, so slightly over 1.5 years old, and the title here means "Winter Heart: Death in a cold night", admittedly a bit clumsy. Like most small screen releases here in my country, it runs for 1.5 hours. The director is Johannes Fabrick and he is pretty prolific, has been for a long time and his body of work is pretty big in terms of quantity, even for a filmmaker in his 60s. Quality-wise, it is alright I would say, not too great, not too shabby either, certainly better than what writer Susanne Schneider has come up with overall. She is not that prolfic, even if she has also made films for almost 3 decades now, but the quality is not there. Or at least not that often. So you should keep your expectations rather low for this combined effort. The word "Tod" or "Death" in the title already makes obvious that this is a crime movie at its center, even if there are other aspects as well. Also there was more sex and nudity in here than I expected, which probably means that you will never get to see this film before 10 pm in the evening perhaps. Actually I watched it in the middle of the night way after midnight. As Laura de Boer is also part of these, I will not complain. She also plays a Dutch character by the way, just like she is Dutch in real life. Her character's name sounds otherwise though, but I guess Sylvie Meis (vdv) made it happen and the last name is alright because she is married to a German. Anyway, I thought she was stunning and the actress who plays the other girlfriend early on is not unattractive either. The cast as a whole is alright, several fairly experienced actors, but no real big names as you also sometime ssee them for small screen films here in my country. I would not say it is their fault that eventually I have to give this film a thumbs-down. There were just too many factors eventually that hurt the film's shot at being a gritty crime movie and made it fairly unrealistic.
While I believe the first half here was better than the second half, I still think there are flaws there. The biggest was maybe how the male protagonist and the judge's wife meet, namely at the grave of the killed boy. It is a huge coincidence that they are there at the same time and the man seeing through her lie right away can be accepted perhaps if we say he has great instinct with his cop background, but the fact that they were there at the same time was just too much. If we acceppt that she goes there anyway and risks getting caught. She clearly has more morals than her husband (which we also see during the clumdy sinner throw-up scene), but still it was bit much. The affair that ensues is not much better and adds almost nothing, at least the way they depicted it. And finally, when the male protagonist abducts and kidnaps the judge, this is where the film really hits rock bottom. Such a pity. Not only did I struggle with the idea that he as 100% sure so quickly he (or they) were responsible for the killing, but if they indeed anted to take the revenge path or at least the violence path (an eye for an eye until he admits it was him), then they could have done so in a million more creative ways. The road they actually took felt showy with almost no substance at all. Disappointing. And these flaws made me quickly forget about the more positive aspects, such as the somewhat open ending. We do not find out if he is going to admit and go to jail. We only know the protagonist will not have to worry about consequences probably for what he did to the judge. Maybe the former also lets him get away in order to protect de Boer's character who is in it too. Or maybe the protagonist does not care about her at all anymore and only wants justice for her brother and will ruthlessly pursue them both legally. Just like he forgot about his former girlfriend, which of course had to do with her being in the way of him going to get his brother home that fateful night because they were having sex at the exact same time and he ignored the call as a consequence. We will not know 100% how the story continues when the closing credits roll in. I guess we can be pretty sure though that the parents will not have to worry about further tormenting from the judge. By the way, I keep saying "the judge" as if he was really experienced already, but in fact that character is also pretty young still and a bit of an up-and-comer. I did like Frank Pätzold's performance there. He managed to achieve some nice shades, maybe my favorite from the entire film. He played a man who did have morals, but whose morals were not big enough to sacrifice his career and successful life style for them. Pay attention to how he says that nothing will bring the boy back to life, so why ruin his own life because of what happened. Yeah, the performances really weren't the problem here, but the script sometimes was just too gimmicky and over the top, even if there are interesting sequences like also the actual accident during which the victim did not seem to be harmed too much from how he reacted to it. Anyway, as a consequence, I have to give this film a thumbs-down. It's nowhere near failure territory, but also not good enough for me to recommend it to you. Also the winter/snow component could have been handled more memorably if they include it in the title already. Go for something else instead.
While I believe the first half here was better than the second half, I still think there are flaws there. The biggest was maybe how the male protagonist and the judge's wife meet, namely at the grave of the killed boy. It is a huge coincidence that they are there at the same time and the man seeing through her lie right away can be accepted perhaps if we say he has great instinct with his cop background, but the fact that they were there at the same time was just too much. If we acceppt that she goes there anyway and risks getting caught. She clearly has more morals than her husband (which we also see during the clumdy sinner throw-up scene), but still it was bit much. The affair that ensues is not much better and adds almost nothing, at least the way they depicted it. And finally, when the male protagonist abducts and kidnaps the judge, this is where the film really hits rock bottom. Such a pity. Not only did I struggle with the idea that he as 100% sure so quickly he (or they) were responsible for the killing, but if they indeed anted to take the revenge path or at least the violence path (an eye for an eye until he admits it was him), then they could have done so in a million more creative ways. The road they actually took felt showy with almost no substance at all. Disappointing. And these flaws made me quickly forget about the more positive aspects, such as the somewhat open ending. We do not find out if he is going to admit and go to jail. We only know the protagonist will not have to worry about consequences probably for what he did to the judge. Maybe the former also lets him get away in order to protect de Boer's character who is in it too. Or maybe the protagonist does not care about her at all anymore and only wants justice for her brother and will ruthlessly pursue them both legally. Just like he forgot about his former girlfriend, which of course had to do with her being in the way of him going to get his brother home that fateful night because they were having sex at the exact same time and he ignored the call as a consequence. We will not know 100% how the story continues when the closing credits roll in. I guess we can be pretty sure though that the parents will not have to worry about further tormenting from the judge. By the way, I keep saying "the judge" as if he was really experienced already, but in fact that character is also pretty young still and a bit of an up-and-comer. I did like Frank Pätzold's performance there. He managed to achieve some nice shades, maybe my favorite from the entire film. He played a man who did have morals, but whose morals were not big enough to sacrifice his career and successful life style for them. Pay attention to how he says that nothing will bring the boy back to life, so why ruin his own life because of what happened. Yeah, the performances really weren't the problem here, but the script sometimes was just too gimmicky and over the top, even if there are interesting sequences like also the actual accident during which the victim did not seem to be harmed too much from how he reacted to it. Anyway, as a consequence, I have to give this film a thumbs-down. It's nowhere near failure territory, but also not good enough for me to recommend it to you. Also the winter/snow component could have been handled more memorably if they include it in the title already. Go for something else instead.
