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Barely released from prison, gentleman robber mastermind Werner Blücher already plans another major heist and prepares a 'shopping list' for his cahoots. Taxi-driving kin Andy Walz is reluctant until he hears it may render him and wife Suzanne rich. Young Andy Walz is eager enough to impersonate a cop in his late grandpa's uniform to 'borrow' a broken-down beat-car. Target is the warehouse used by crime baron Leo Kaiser, where they find tobacco bales filled with cash earmarked for incineration. Incompetent police commissioner Schmitz-Kesselhoff tailed Blüchner but tips off Kaiser, assuming him to be in cahoots, so his political ally has the case removed from the PD by the time her abused underling Müller Zwo could catch Andy rolling in stolen cash. The stately home of bed-ridden Dr. Ballmann, suggested by Andy, who minds him regularly, as stash becomes the scene for a spectacular disappointment in the finale.

&quot;Die Blücherbande&quot; is a German television film from 2009, so this one had its 10th anniversary last year. The director is Udo Witte and the screenplay is by Michael Baier, who is sadly no longer with us and for him this film here was the final non-series effort of his career. Well, one should not be too critical about the dead I suppose, so I won&#39;t go much into detail, but let me just say that looking at the majority of other projects Baier worked on, I am not surprised this one here did not turn out so well. However, the positive thing that also needs to be said is that his career was by no means as poor and embarrassing as director Witte&#39;s career and as he was just slightly over a decade younger than Baier back then, he also was a pretty prolific and experienced filmmaker at that point, but boy does he have many failure in his body of work. Taking this into account, I&#39;d almost say that the outcome here with two stars out of five is still a positive surprise overall, even if it is not a good rating by any means. This also certainly has to do with the cast because because Rohde, Schüttauf and Bezzel in the lead with Gwisdek, Krause and Wöhler as supporting is really somethin you don&#39;t get too often for a small screen film. Sadly, they messed up a bit there as well. With this cast there was a lot more possible here quality-wise. Just take Gwisdek. By the way, we are talking about Michael Gwisdek here, not his son. I like his son a lot more and honestly I feel with Michael that he does not have a lot of range at all and plays the same character in almost every movie. He somehow gets away with it thanks to his recognition value. Here it is really a bad joke though. I mean his character is really an insult to the audience. Somehow he is exactly in charge of the investigating police officer and at the same time also has business connections with the crooks that are represented through Krause&#39;s character. I cannot say anything bad about him. He is fun as always and I found it interesting to see him play a villain for once. I think usually he almost always plays likeable character. Rohde is probably the one whose character is more in the lead than everybody else, but this also has to do with Rohde&#39;s charisma. I think he is one who also is a bit overrated and not the most versatile actor, but he also makes up for it through recognition value. Bezzel I like as well and it was good he had so much screen time. Schüttauf honestly felt a bit wasted to me. He was just there, but had almost no material at all to shine.<br/><br/>This is a crime comedy from beginning to end. Rohde&#39;s character gets out of jail at the very start, but he has not changed one bit. He is still sure his last plan was amazing, even if he went to jail because of that and it does not take long at all for him to come up with the next idea for a crime. His two buddies help him of course. They are the Blücherbande / Blücher gang named after Rohde&#39;s character. This would be far more interesting if they ere based on an actually existing gang, but it is all fictitious here. The only reason why they are not being caught immediately is that the police officer in charge of taking a look at them is even more clumsy and incompetent than they are. Despite all the crime references though, it must be said that the film is just too absurd to work as anything else than a comedy. They tried to convince us it does for example with the tense music during the safe cracking scene, but even there when they do not find what they thought would be in the safe, comedy prevails. Unfortunately, said comedy is also not really on a high level. The moments I found funny were truly rare sadly. One would be when Rohde&#39;s and Bezzel&#39;s characters are interrogated by the female investigator and she says something where they got the police uniform from and Bezzel&#39;s character responds something implying she is wrong, but that they had it from somewhere else and Rohde&#39;s character immediately makes a noise that he must shut up. But it is not really that Rohde plays a criminal mastermind or so, just that Bezzel&#39;s character is really not smart at all. So taking all this into account, it is pretty surprising how much success they have with their plan, even if a great deal of coincidence also helped them on several occasions. Oh yeah, I just mentioned the police uniform. Kinda fitting with Bezzel&#39;s trademark series being one in which he plays an actual police officer and they are correct about how he is the only one who can wear the uniform and make people actually believe he is a cop. And all this although Eberhofer was still almost half a decade away from existing. At least in films, maybe not in books. There are minor aspects of violence in here like we see one character knock another out, but it is never graphic, just really harmless. I wish I could say this is harmless fun, but harmless nonsense fits probably better for a description here. It&#39;s never on failure level, but it is almost never good quality either. Even if you like the cast (and I sure like some of them), the overall outcome is not good enough for a positive recommendation. I say skip the watch and go for something else instead, even if admittedly there are many clearly inferior films shown on German afternoon television in contrast to this one here that was airing today. Thumbs-down nonetheless.

User reviews

Die Blücherbande

A bit stupid at times

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