Munich. Josef wears a courrier suit and uses one of his fifty keys to enter someone else's apartment. When the real owner, Veronika, shows up, he witnesses how she is killed by photographer Ana Gram and Richie, and left in the aquarium. Police commissioners Ivo Batic and Franz Leitmayr investigate. Josef continues living in foreign apartments, but gives them a hint whom to investigate. Ivo and Franz discover that Ana's late rich father changed his last will to not leave her any inheritance, and that she persuaded notary Manz and his assistant Veronika to change the will back. Predictably, Manz is also soon murdered. Josef presents himself as a ghost to a little girl, but her mother Claudia discovers him. Years before, Josef's son drowned in the river, and his wife killed herself after it. When Ana and Richie want to eliminate Josef at the bridge, they are arrested by Ivo and Franz.
Episode 515 of the ever popular German TV-crime series "Tatort", "Foreign Resident" is a solid and good edition, but just barely. A lot of threads connect in the end, but a lot of them are also left incomplete and unresolved. There are some neat twists in the opening that trick the viewers thinking one thing, but it later turns out that something else happened: for instance, Josef, a stranger, enters a foreign apartment, but then hides when the real owner, Veronika, shows up. Veronika is later found murdered and the viewers immediately jump to the conclusion that Josef is the perpetrator, but it later turns out he was just the witness to the real two killers who attacked Veronika at her home. Another suspect, Veronika's ex-boyfriend, Bartl, is caught trying to falsify her signature to get her savings, but it turns out he also didn't kill her. One throw-away joke involves a random pharmacist saying this joke: "A Rabbi complains to God: 'Jehovah, what should I do? My son converted to Christianity!' And God tells him: 'And? Mine too!' 'So what did you do?' 'I just made a new testament!'" The movie gains the most from the two charming lead actors Miroslav Nemec and Udo Wachtveitl as the police commissionars Ivo and Franz, but the voice actress Claudia Lossl is also great in the small role of the hairdresser who discovers Joseph, yet she is sadly underused and required more screen time. He is the weak link: why is he living in other people's apartments? How does he get in without anyone noticing? One presumes that the story will explain that he is a locksmith or something, but no, nothing is clarified. The story needed less Ana Gram and more Claudia, yet it is overall still a solid episode.
Grade:++
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