Movie Reviews - new films reviewed

After a confrontation with bad cop Krotznig (Roland Düringer) Leopold ‘Lemming’ Wallisch (Fritz Karl) quits his job as police officer and works as a private eye. What begins like the usual – the observation of a suspected unfaithful husband – ends with the observed being murdered in the woods and the observer being suspect number one for Krotznig. Though cleared from the accusation quickly, Krotznig rightly suspects Wallisch knows something he didn’t tell the police and is on his tail anytime, anywhere.
Wallisch starts his own investigation of the murder and discovers the victim was a dreaded Latin teacher some 20 years ago who may have been responsible for the suicide of one of his students. Are the “Friends of Brutus”, a secret brotherhood of former students who still suffer from their 20-year-old memories, the killers? And how is the strange dog that follows Wallisch since the murder involved in the case? And does beautiful veterinary Klara (Julia Koschitz) know more than she tells Wallisch?

After the Brenner-films (based on detective stories by Wolf Haas) this is the first movie case of ‘The Lemming’, based on a story by Stefan Slupetzky. Similar to the Brenner-films, the actual case plays second fiddle to the typical viennese settings and bizarre characters. Austrian top cabaret artist Roland Düringer as dirty cop is the movies’ main asset, and fellow comedian Dolores Schmidinger is stealing each scene she is in as eccentric arts teacher (“… also strictly forbidden, of course!”). Compared to them and the attractive Julia Koschitz (and even to dog Castro), our hero Fritz Karl seems rather pale (not to mention in comparison with ‘Brenner’ Josef Hader).
Although not very cinematic, it’s a good first attempt for the ‘Lemming’ and a rewarding look at the ‘other’ Vienna, aloof from Lipizzaner, Mozart and Wiener Walzer.

Der Fall des Lemming movie trailer

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 18th, 2009 at 2:32 pm and is filed under 3-star-movies, 4-star-movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.