Inspector Karow hasn't had a partner since the serial death of his colleague Rubin, but has recently had a past: "The Victim" tells three gay love stories.
A badly battered Commissioner Karow (Mark Waschke) on a campaign for revenge, a brutal clan boss with dirty secrets and a run-down warehouse in Lichtenberg: the ingredients for a cracking showdown are on a silver platter in Berlin's new "crime scene". Karow has followed the trail of Mesut Günes (Sahin Eryilmaz), the alleged murderer of his childhood friend Maik Balthasar (Andreas Pietschmann), to this point. Drug lab, torture cellar, behind the steel door could be anything. Instead: A love nest, lovingly set up by the boss of the Günes clan, on the bedside table Polaroid selfies with him and his lover (Luka Dimic).
First Karow's despair over the death of his partner Rubin, then the alleged murder of his buddy Maik, who was investigating Günes as an undercover agent and was found in the forest branded as a "traitor" with a bullet in the head and the corners of his mouth cut. In the end, a suicide mission, because the boss (Jasmin Tabatabai) doesn't want to believe in Karow's version of the story. In the first half of the film, "The Victim" heaps together a whole bunch of crime and thriller clichés: and then clears them all up in the warehouse scene at once.
It is at this moment that screenwriter Erol Yesilkaya manages to show how deeply the viewer's expectations, which have been rehearsed for years, are anchored in the general understanding of crime fiction. That fits, just like the subsequently told three gay love stories, which are all linked in the end. The directness with which director Stefan Schaller shows all the snogging between clan chief and callboy, callboy and undercover agent, undercover agent and Karow will not please all viewers - all the better that ARD dares to do it on Sunday evening after the World Cup final to offend.
The fact that it takes a little longer after the warehouse scene to break up the ingrained pattern is shown a little later: Karow, drunk and angry, bumps his way through Berlin at night, a mad cop looking for trouble. You can guess what follows: "Be careful where you step," he is finally confronted by a much taller man. "And what if not?" Karow growls. The other bends down, sees the desperation in the policeman's eyes - and kisses him.
It's precisely these surprising resolutions that make "The Sacrifice" a film that is really worth seeing - as long as you are willing to look past the weak flashbacks in Karow's youth with mercy.
