"Ostfriesenblut" is a German television film from 2018, actually almost 2019, so this film is only slightly over 1.5 years old. The director is Rick Ostermann, who was exactly 40 that year and he is a very prolific assistant director, but also looking at the works where he wwas the man in charge, there is something in his body of work (Wolfskinder) that I certainly enjoyed, so I am pretty disappointed that this movie here is now the direction he is heading quality-wise. The writer is Nils-Morten Osburg and his body of work is also not too shabby, but also admittedly not too great. He adapted the novel by Klaus-Peter Wolf here. Wolf's books have been the basis for these "Ostfriesen..." films on several occasions. It all started back in 2017 and since then there was one adaptation per year, so this one i the seccond out of four films so far. I genuinely hope the others are better, but I kinda doubt it. Also I have not read Wolf's books, so I cannot say if the flaws are already in his writing or if they happened during the transition into the movie(s). Also very difficult to make a guess there given the exact contents, so I will not even try. Instead, I will just elaborate on this film in a way as if there was no connection to anything written other than the screenplay. The lead actress in all these films is Christiane Paul. She has been in many films already for over 20 years and is definitely also among the more known German actresses abroad. This does not really say too much about her quality. I don't think there is a lot. In her best performances, she still never ranges above mediocre, but sometimes she is even fairly bad and this film here is definitely a case. There weren't more than two or three face expressions throughout the entire movie coming from her here. major disappointment and she is not fit for the task to lead this franchise. Apparently, other viewers disagree though because otherwise the series would have stopped already and the counter would not be at four by now, so ratings are high enough though. Oh well, maybe I am doing them injustice and the other films are really way better, but I kinda doubt it. There are more familiar names and faces in here: Metschurat, Schüttauf, Franke, Stötzner and Maertens turn it into an above-average production for the small screen in terms of the cast. Anne Werner too, even if for her it is mostly because of her looks and not really because she has anything to work with here. Admittedly, she is also not bad, she just has no material and when she is in the film more frequently towards the end, she is basically just the scared hostage victim while Paul is doing all the work. Or should be doing, but is not because she is not good enough. One cast member I want to talk about specifically here is Jörg Schüttauf. He is an actor who also has a very long career, but I must admit that until relatively recently, despite his popularity, he has not really been on my radar at all. My loss for sure. He is doing mighty fine here and in other stuff as well. If there is any reason to not call this movie a failure, that it is his portrayal. But sadly, even with how good he is, the bad linked to this film is much worse and it's still an agonizing watch.
I will give a few examples: Already mentioned Paul's pretty uninspired lackluster performance and she is really the negative center of the film all along. Unless she is out of the picture for a while and we see Schüttauf's character and his hostage victim. One really bad example is also how Paul (or her character) is on a staged version of "Aktenzeichen XY" with Rudi Cerne here. Oh boy, that was cringeworthy, especially how she kept looking awkwardly in the camera implying that she is not a person comfortable with media and selling herself. Well, I guess they wanted to tell us this way that she is too authentic for that and too much of a real cop. Try again. The comedy moment of her ringtone, sounds of a seal I believe, also got old pretty quickly and the lastt two times or so it just offered more cringe, especially when it goes off down there and Schüttauf's character is amazed by the sound. Well, he did not hear it before and that's why. Another thing here from a filmmaking perspective, a creative perspective (or not so creative) was the idea of using a really straight centric camera angle when filming certain characters, be it Paul's or also people just making a statement to the police like a woman on one occasion. It felt like taken from a Wes Anderson movie basically where you usually see it with things though, food sometimes, but here and there also with people, but you have to imagine it all gone rong because it wa the epitome of forgettable style over substance and added absolutely nothing in terms of the story or the film as a whole. Okay what else can I say. The crime case as a whole, well no, that is not the right way to put it, the police investigation in said crime case, yep that is it, this police investigation feels absolutely unrealistic, be it Paul's character realizing what happened, be it how she gets caught by the bad guy, be it how good prevails at the end, it all feels staged and scripted, never like an authentic crime case. Truly disappointing. This could have been so much better with Schüttauf's character and the motivation behind his crimes not being too bad. The potential was there, but it was all lost in execution. Difficult to say something positive here, maybe it is positive how they weren't scared of having a semi bad guy getting killed at the end, which was a bit bold, even if the depiction was so harmless that it felt almost ridiculous. And for each tolerabble moment, there were two or three weak moments and twists like how the bad guy installs all these camera at the cop's home or how he randomly kidnaps Anne Werner's character at one point too and that so added nothing. Also one big failure here, almost on a fraudulent level, is how they used a certain German region (in the title here) from the north and normally these crime movies with focus on local habits etc. offer some comedic value besides a tolerable crime tale, but this one is not even going for the comedy. And at the same time flopping really hard with the crime story. Highly not recommended. Zero motivation for me to check out any of the other (so far) three films and honestly I hope that they will not keep doing these, but I kinda feel my hopes there will be disappointed. Watch something else instead.
