Crooks is a German series created by Marvin Krenl, Benjamin Hessler and Georg Lippert. It stars Frederick Lau, Christoph Krutzler and Svenja Jung.
If you’re looking for a series filled with action, thrill, and lots of bad mafia guys, “Crooks” is tailor-made for your taste. With a realistic tone, quick to trigger, and action-packed, it’s a series designed for lovers of electrifying thrillers without the psychological element. To give you a slight idea, “Crooks” is a series with a Guy Ritchie-like theme, with that distinctive pace… but with a more realistic and less nonchalant tone. It’s a series about mafias, robberies that constantly employ violence as a narrative element. We think Scorsese would like it.
Plot
The theft of a coin triggers a series of plots involving German, Croatian, and Russian gangs.
About the series
A quick, vivacious, and agile series: a plot with many characters whose intrigue revolves around violence itself, gang wars, and more. At the center, a locksmith, who is somewhat the embodiment of that kind-hearted character lost among bad men, but who doesn’t lose his criminal past.
Aesthetically speaking: it’s cold photography, very German, but with a narrative that knows how to combine the best of European and American cinematography: the Hollywood pace with a more realistic and truthful way of understanding cinema, and in this case, the series.
“Crooks” is a series that knows at all times who it’s targeted at and never loses its way: it’s action-filled, fast, and sometimes brutal, with doses of humor and lots of realism, extreme situations, and crass language. It’s not “The Gentlemen” (the recent Guy Ritchie series for Netflix) or a Scorsese, but it has a bit of both, without losing its style and charm.
While it doesn’t delve into the psychological, the characters are well defined and each has their stories. “Crooks” has a solid script that is often overlooked due to the quick pace of its scenes, the rapid-fire pace of its dialogues, a series where the fast rhythm prevails over reflective pause. It doesn’t seem to take time for anything, but manages to condense many plot points in little space.
A lot of realism, lots of modern street gangs, and lots of handheld camera for filming the scenes. We don’t have elaborated plans or intricate compositions, the camera moves at all times almost freely, following the actions of the actors and their agile movements at the same pace, as if it were Dogma cinema (it’s not).
The casting is convincing, headed by Frederick Lau. However, we liked Christoph Krutzler, who plays an adorable role and the actor knows how to characterize and evolve, also a benevolent man among criminals, and a crazy plot.
“Crooks” is a series with its own style that, although it’s another story of criminals and robberies, knows how to add that European touch to a story we’ve so often seen in Hollywood.
