User Reviews

"Erntedank. Ein Allgäukrimi" is a German television film from 2009, so only two more years until this one has its 10th anniversary. It runs for slightly under 1.5 hours and was directed by Rainer Kaufmann, a pretty experienced and established filmmaker. The protagonist is played by Herbert Knaup and he returned on several other occasions as cop Kluftinger who is not interested in new technology, tiny soy meals and humor in general you could say. Yet the people around him result in several funny situations and this film is actually among the very first of many that bring a tone of humor as it is common, almost unique, in certain areas in Germany these days, in South Germany in this very case, namely in the Allgäu. All these movies bring certain peculiarities with the that are especially defining for the people there and they combine these peculiarities with a crime plot in the center of it all. This time we have murders happening with strong similarities to local legends where the one who gets punished usually had it coming his way and it was not entirely uncalled for. As for the beginning, the idea of a new cop coming to town and promptly colliding with the local officers, i.e. his new colleagues is a nice one that never gets old. I personally enjoy these movies and I will certainly check out the sequels for the Klüftinger/Allgäu edition. The famous cast members are good and so are the lesser known. The story is fine too and eventual plot weaknesses are quickly made up for by the comedy/charm of the characters. For example I did not like the solution this much here. Maybe Noethen's character being the killer would have been better. But it was somewhat expected who did it since the first time Klüftinger met the ones responsible. Still we get the funny arrest scene of the son and that makes up for it. Also the last scene between Knaup and Noethen was really good. It looked a bit as if they could build up the latter as a bit of a recurring antagonist. Shame they didn't. I hope the sequels are as good as this one. It is all that Tatort tries so hard to be, but will probably never achieve. Go check it out. Oh yeah, it is by no means necessary to have read any of the books to enjoy this one.