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Mariam Hage as Azra: Battles of words, broken bones, here both take place at the highest level

Photo: Felix Vratny / ORF / ARD

If you feel safe, you've already lost. This excellent mafia thriller from Vienna obeys this maxim in both conversation and battle scenes. It derives its dynamism and tension above all from how the figures pull the other person over the table or slam them onto the mat from positions of supposed weakness. Battles of words, broken bones, here both take place at the highest level.

The bone fractures go like this, for example: A guy with a wide-unbuttoned shirt stands up in the martial arts cellar in front of a young woman who is a head shorter and lets his arms circle through the air like a karate god. The woman first sprays pepper spray in the face of the would-be Bruce Lee, then gives him a right hand and finally a head nut to twist his hand on the ground. Hit, dislocated.

The young woman with the delicate right hand and the forehead made of steel is Azra, a junkie's daughter, a street child, a bouncer and an informant for the police department. The one on the ground, screaming in pain, is the son of the Georgian godfather of Vienna. With the exhibition fight, Azra tries to offer herself to the old man as a bodyguard. The mafia boss is in mortal danger; his brother has just been shot dead in the parking lot in front of the family's club. Is this a consequence of turf wars with other clans or an internal quarrel in the family? Azra is supposed to bring in information for the investigator duo Eisner (Harald Krassnitzer) and Fellner (Adele Neuhauser) under the bodyguard identity.

In the network of the Georgian mafia

This "crime scene" is about the Georgian mafia, which is said to be closely networked with politicians and industrialists in Vienna. But it's not so much about big deals and fat mansions, about clan folklore and archaic blood revenge, but rather about who can foist or withhold what information from whom and when.

»Azra«, as the episode is titled, is less a mafia opera than a trickster thriller. The fact that, for all his playfulness, he comes along with enormous emotional force is also due to the Serbian-Lebanese-Austrian actress Mariam Hage, who gives an idea of a great tragedy in the embodiment of the bone crusher behind the trickery and wedges.

The Vienna »Tatort« is currently on a great run. Speed, depth and good sarcastic humor go together brilliantly here. This episode also has an enormous speed, but those responsible (script: Sarah Wassermair, director: Dominik Hartl) know how to withhold central information over long distances, so that you remain in the approximate with the investigators. For this purpose, the narrative time is cleverly played with. Ellipses and real-time alternate constantly.

The investigator duo is visibly losing sovereignty, as their tactical moves are often already priced in by their opponents. Grandiose scene: The driven Fellner and Eisner feel quite savvy and concoct how they want to manipulate a detained mafia henchman in the interrogation so that they can use him for their own purposes.

The man who is about to be tricked greets them with a smile: "I can smell it from here, you need my help." Eisner and Fellner had probably already forgotten in their stress: If you are lulled into a sense of security, you have already lost.

Rating: 9 out of 10 points

»Crime Scene: Azra«, Whit Monday (!), 20.15 p.m., Das Erste