Neue Zürcher Zeitung

A remarkably quiet earthquake

Swiss television surprises with the best "CRIME SCENE" of the year.

Nobody expected a Swiss angle after the dull first six months of "CRIME SCENE": The suspense thriller "You will be judged" is about a killer taking revenge. It turns out to be a masterpiece.

This film does not lose any time and gets straight to the point. The television audience knows who the killer is in two and a half minutes. He has already shot two young Albanian car dealers and is carrying the case with the murder weapon and silencer carefully back into his workshop: A glance of two earlier photos of the victims - is there satisfaction on his face?
This extraordinary "CRIME SCENE" episode is not about the search for the murderer. That's what it's about for the investigators, of course, but they are not central here. "It looks like an execution," says the woman from forensics, looking at the corpses, the brains oozing out of their skulls. The next day, a third man is shot in the street the same way, which suggests a serial killer. The quiet town of Lucerne is terrified, and police chief Mattmann (Jean-Pierre Cornu) turns to Scotland Yard profilers for assistance. Soon it becomes clear that they are dealing with a self-righteous sniper taking revenge, hence the title "You will be judged".
The ninth "CRIME SCENE" from Lucerne is not only a classic suspense thriller, in which the police always lag behind the perpetrator. The film looks deep into the souls of his psychologically finely drawn characters (screenplay: Urs Buehler), and what he conveys in advance is hard to bear. The sniper Simon Amstad, a Michael Kohlhaas of our time, projects his anger at the imperfections of the judicial system, hunting down his carefully selected victims one by one. Afterwards, on the way home, he buys croissants for his wife Karin (Sarah Hostettler), who sits dumbly in the apartment day after day, and is obviously the reason for his anger.
We discover the trauma overshadowing their marriage in their wordless despair along the way. Here, the image of the perpetrator as a poor devil is quietly achieved, because Amstad has already served his punishment in the hell that is his marriage. "You will be judged" is also a touching love story. The film offers plenty of psychological nuance, which is so dutifully spelled on the offender as a sacrifice. Not only because all of them are permanently damaged by life - but also the couple's friend Simic (Misel Maticevic) with his horrifying experience in the Yugoslavian war.
Amstad's self-righteousness is justified by its madness, expressed in the conviction that justice does not exist, "unless you find it yourself," only as the final result of a blurred sense of right, leading inspector Flueckiger (Stefan Gubser) to slap a witness. Good and evil become one, and Swiss director Florian Froschmayer stages this crime drama about the relationship of right and justice in a consistently hard, archaic atmosphere with a surprising, bitter end. The leading actor, Antoine Monot Jr. dazzles in his modesty. His sniper is not a cold-blooded monster and psychopath, but a man tired of bearing the whole injustice of the world on his shoulders. It is simply great, as Monot's bearish, atypical killer begins to get irritated when someone pushes in line in front of him in the bakery. The inner quiver, which ultimately leads to the catastrophe, is not visible from now on, but it does not leave the picture anymore.
This "CRIME SCENE" has nothing to do with the uninspired routine, with which the popular format recently solved its cases. Flueckiger and his colleague Liz Ritschard (Delia Mayer) are also morally challenged when they find themselves having to warn potential murder victims, because they could become victims themselves for trying to help a rapist, a speed maniac and a thug. The repeated bloodshed may seem too realistic here, and one need wonder where the boundaries of evening crime drama should be drawn. According to the principle of "comfort" television, murder in the family-friendly version seems utterly harmless. "You will be judged", on the other hand, goes against the grain and looks at itself critically under a magnifying glass without spoiling the fun, if you can even say that in this case.

original text by: Claudia Schwartz

Outlet: Neue Zürich Zeitung (NZZ) 
Date: September 5th, 2015 
Circulation: 150,000

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