Having made exactly nothing out of his life, Brenner moves back to
Graz, the town he has left many years ago due to bad memories, and into
the derelict house of his late parents. Being short on cash, he tries to
sell his old gun from his times in the police academy to his friend Köck
(Roland Düringer) ... sort of a harmless blackmail attempt, as many years
back he and Köck were involved in a bank robbery. Thing is, Köck isn't
exactly in the money either, but he knows somebody who is, police chief
Aschbrenner (Tobias Moretti), who was also involved in the bank robbery
all those years back, and who has something to lose as opposed to the
others ... Aschbrenner makes a visit to Brenner, being all slick and
friendly, but Brenner thinks Aschbrenner's threatening him ... and the
next day, Brenner is found with a bullet in the head - but not a
life-threatening one, and thanks to a neighbour (Johannes
Silberschneider), Brenner makes it to the hospital in time and is nursed
back to health ... but when he's visited by Aschbrenner, he sees it fit to
make a getaway and wants to hide out at Köck's - but he finds Köck dead,
murdered, and since he's not back to his old self yet, Brenner passes out
next to the corpse ... where he's found by the police, who have to let him
go because they can't find the murder weapon - and Aschbrenner himself
sees to it that Brenner is sent back to the hospital. Young cop Heinz
(Christopher Schärf) investigates the murder, but Aschbrenner intervenes,
as the investigations might uncover some inconvenient facts - like the
bank robbery. Then though a witness (Sasa Barbul) identifies Aschbrenner's
own wife (Nora von Waldstätten) as Köck's killer - and suddenly things
get very personal for Aschbrenner, and he manages to kill the witness
while he's under police observation, then even kills cop Heinz after he
has identified his wife as the killer ... There is a problem though,
Aschbrenner's wife might also be his daughter - or Brenner's or Köck's
daughter or the daughter of a fourth friend, her mother (Margarete Tiesel)
is less than sure as back in the day she had had sex with all four men who
were involved in that bank robbery. Anyways, now that Brenner knows the
truth, Aschbrenner is more than determined to kill him as well, and
manages to corner him after a long chase through the city - but it's not
easy to kill an old friend, and Brenner plays on this, and then
Aschbrenner's heart isn't what it once was anymore, and ultimately he dies
from a heart attack, leaning against Brenner's shoulder while watching the
beautiful fireworks he has arranged for his wife's birthday. ... and
ultimately, Brenner manages to clear the whole thing up with the police
without drawing Aschbrenner's wife into this, after all, she might just as
well be his daughter. Oh, and the bulltet in Brenner's head ... he
actually had tried to kill himself in an acute migrane attack but
suffering from partial amnesia would denie that later. Das
Ewige Leben, the fourth of the Brenner-movies, still
shows the series on a very high quality level: The cast is first rate, the
story intelligent and full of underlying irony without ever just mocking
itself, the direction elegant, and several setpieces (like the chase in
the finale) are very much on the inventive side while going against genre
expectaions and show how such scenes can work without just pushing for
speed. Olus, one can't but love the film's macabre tone. Totally worth a
watch!
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