Trama

A discharged police officer is given a chance to regain his former life by capturing a bank robbery crew. Teaming up with a young policewoman, the ex-cop must act swiftly before the heist draws unwanted scrutiny from the new authorities.

In the early 1990s, a discharged police officer (Olaf Lubaszenko) is given a chance to reclaim his former life in exchange for capturing a group responsible for an attack on the bank. With a young policewoman assigned to the case, the detective must act quickly; media attention on the robbery is unwelcomed by new authorities.

A bank robbery has taken place and bank employees have been brutally killed by the robbers. The authorities want the perpetrators to be caught as soon as possible. They recruit an experienced former police officer to work along with a policewoman of the department to finish this task.—Madan Marwah

At a bank three women are held hostage by some armed robbers, before one of the women is eventually shot and killed. In the Polish countryside, a woman is driven in a government car. The woman happens to be a state-appointed prosecutor, and she is part of the official team that is investigating the violent robbery at the SGB bank that shook the country only a few hours earlier. She is currently in search of the residence of a man named Tadeusz Gadacz (Olaf Lubaszenko). Gadacz was quite a famous and effective police officer, even notorious for his way of conducting investigations, up until the fall of the Communist regime in Poland. Gadacz had also been fired from his job, particularly because he was quite closely associated with the officials of the time.

Although the country had recently gone through a complete political makeover, the police and the authorities are revealed to be currently stumped by the bank robbery case. While the stealing of money from the bank could have still been taken a bit lightly, the fact that the robbers had murdered the three tellers in cold blood ensured that the government left no stone upturned in trying to find the perpetrators.

Besides, as an integral part of the changing economy of Poland, the particular bank has also been in the process of merging with a private company, essentially ushering in a period of privatization and a free economy. However, the recent robbery and all the media attention that it has garnered are massive disruptions to and distractions from the privatization process, as stated by the prosecutor herself.

The new Polish government is in a hurry to solve the case and move on with its nationwide transformation, and they are ready to bring in the old gun, Tadeusz Gadacz, to help them with the matter. The prosecutor directly offers Gadacz a deal on behalf of the government that if he helps them track down the perpetrators and catch them, then the new state will forgive his association with the Communist regime and let him return to service as a deputy inspector. Always passionate about catching criminals and struggling to fit into a life devoid of police work, Gadacz accepts the deal and prepares to find the robbers within two weeks' time.

On the first day of the investigation, Tadeusz Gadacz visits the branch of the SGB bank where the crime had taken place and is teamed up with a woman named Aleksandra Janicka (Wiktoria Gorodecka). He is also given a spot in the local police station and access to police files and other items. The robbers took a mere 100,000 Zlotys from the bank. Shortly before the robbery, the lottery office had a change of plans and picked 1.5 million Zlotys from the bank.

The first theory that is suggested by many of the subordinate police officers and some of the bank employees as well is that the security guard himself had committed the crime and fled. The guard has been missing ever since the robbery took place, and so everyone is quick to assume his guilt. Gadacz finds the theory very odd though, considering the fact that guard had worked at the bank for a very long time, committing such a crime only a year before he was supposed to retire does not seem logical. Furthermore, his car is also still inside the parking lot of the bank, and the vehicle was clearly a prized possession of his since it was an expensive one.

Therefore, Gadacz refutes the theory and takes a look at the guard's car instead, only to find blood stains towards the front of it. Soon enough, he is able to find the dead body of the security guard, which had been stowed away inside the vents in the parking lot, and it turns out the apparent suspect was actually the fourth victim of the real perpetrators.

Gadacz and Janicka started to investigate the matter further and found out that the bank's alarms had been turned off by the branch manager, which in itself was a very suspicious thing to do. But the manager revealed that the alarm had been malfunctioning for some time now, so he'd switched it off to avoid hassle. The man had to apparently rush to the bank a couple of times in the recent past only to turn off the alarm in the middle of the night, so he decided to switch it off completely for the weekend. Although he had reported the matter to his superiors, no action had been taken yet.

Eventually, a new lead is found through the personnel records at the bank, for it is revealed that the security guard who had been killed was not even supposed to be on duty on the day of the robbery. He had switched shifts with the other guard, a man named Kacper Surmiak (Jedrzej Hycnar), and incidentally, Kacper was also the guard on duty when the branch manager had switched off the alarm. Gadacz immediately suspects that Kacper might know the perpetrators, and he goes to have a word with the young man. Kacper admits having switched shifts, but he states that he had to go off to a swearing-in ceremony of his friend, for which he needed to take a leave. Apparently, one of his close friends had been accepted into military service, for which he and two other friends, Bartek (Tod Fennell) and Marek (Stanislaw Linowski), had driven to the military camp to have one last celebration with him.

The detectives soon interrogate Bartek, the owner of a video cassette store, and Marek, who lives in the countryside and belongs to a family of hunters. While all these three friends had indeed trained to be security guards together, Gadacz finds something very odd about their claims as they all mention a very particular time at which they had apparently left Warsaw, which would have been a bit difficult to remember so accurately otherwise.

A crucial part of Gadacz's investigation style is to instill fear and tension in the minds of the potential suspects, and he does not care about the impact it would have on their mental or physical health. When he first interrogates Kacper in the police station, he has a subordinate officer feed meat to the piranhas in the fish tank at that exact moment, almost indirectly reminding Kacper who is in control. Similarly, when he visits Marek's farmhouse and learns that the man has a number of guns in his possession, owing to his family's hunting roots, the detective seizes the guns. He admits to Janicka that he does not wish to frame Marek for hunting, which is now technically illegal, and also does not believe that the robbery was committed with these guns, but has seized them simply to keep Marek in check.

Gadacz is an out-and-out old-school police detective, and so many of his ways are quite strange and even questionable to Janicka. When the authorities make all the employees of SGB Bank see a therapist to help ease the shock and stress of having either witnessed a bank robbery or being a part of the associated investigation, Gadacz decides to make use of this chance as well. He knows that Kacper will also have to attend this therapy session and might reveal something crucial about himself, so Gadacz wastes no time to interrogate the therapist herself. As the doctor reminds him of the professional confidentiality she must maintain with regards to her patient, Gadacz does not pay any heed to it, and Janicka has to step in. Janicka objects to her elderly partner's demands, stating that the doctor does not have to reveal anything to him, although she cannot help the situation, and eventually also realizes how Gadacz's old-school techniques of investigation are what make him effective in the first place.

That Tadeusz Gadacz was a close associate of the Communist regime and had a lot of influence at the time also became important in the investigation. Unlike most others around, the man is not afraid or hesitant to talk about the past, which makes him unique in some senses as well. The very minister who appointed Gadacz to investigate the case had once been interrogated very brutally by the detective, possibly as the minister was part of some anti-communist movement, and yet the two are still on talking terms. When Gadacz interrogates the therapist, he almost blackmails her with the information that she had secretly acted against a superior a number of times during the Communist regime, which stopped the latter from getting a passport and fleeing Poland. Gadacz sends cops to interrogate Kacper's fiance and to search the farm of her father to look for the stolen money, even though he knew that the money was not stored there. Gadacz wanted to shake the tree and see if anything fell out. Kacper's fiance leaves him.

During one of the later interrogations, when Kacper is picked up, but there is not enough proof to pin the crime on him, the detective even pulls out his gun and threatens to shoot him. It is almost as if Tadeusz Gadacz uses information from the past to carve his way through the investigation without really taking sides with the Communist Party or the present government.

Kacper Surmiak is perhaps a kind of character who resembles the population of Poland whose lives did not get better in any way after the fall of the regime. The trajectory of his life always remained sad and unfortunate, irrespective of the government that came to power, although the sudden but extreme importance of money in the new era did lead him to commit the crime. Kacper did not really get to experience the love and affection of his parents, owing to the fact that his father had died many years ago and his mother passed away five years ago. His mother worked at a state farm and when that closed she had 3 mouths to feed. She took out a loan, but was harassed by debt collectors and committed suicide. As a result, she was buried at the outskirts of their cemetery. Kacper and his sister were sent to a children's home.

All his affection was towards the only family member he had, his younger sister Ewa, from whom he had recently gotten separated. Both the siblings had grown up in adoption centers and care homes, and while Kacper eventually left and got in trouble with the law, Ewa continued to stay in the care home. Kacper wanted to take his sister home and keep her with him, but the authorities turned down his requests, stating that he did not have enough money to give her a good life.

Only a month before the robbery, Ewa had finally been adopted by a family, and Kacper was livid at the care home for allowing this, as he had wanted to take her home with him.

Gadacz tells Kacper that he will visit Ewa and tell her about how Kacper killed the 3 tellers at the bank. That would surely turn Ewa away from Kacper forever. In another instance later on, when Kacper appoints the help of a notorious goon to kill Gadacz, the goon ends up helping Gadacz, since he was once very close to the detective during the time of the previous government.



As he was reminded, once again, about his lack of wealth, he planned the bank robbery with his two best friends. Bartek and Marek agreed, especially since the former needed money to pay back loans he had taken for the video store as well. Kacper chose the date and time for the robbery, knowing that the alarm would be deactivated and also with the information that around 1.5 million zloty would be in the safe. According to the plan, they broke into the bank and the safe when the place was empty, but could not find the stash of money that they had intended to take. This was because the 1.5 million zloty had already been taken away by the lottery company, which had deposited the amount, as they had had a change in plans. As a result, Kacper, Bartek, and Marek had to spend way more time in the safe than intended, as they picked up whatever amount of money they could find, and this led to the three bank tellers coming down to the safe.

The men initially wanted to just threaten the tellers and leave, but when Bartek mistakenly took the name of Kacper and one of the women identified him, there was no option left for him but to kill them. Incidentally, the three then did visit their friend in the army, and they had made the plan to ensure that they had this alibi. They had visited the army unit the previous night as well, which was when Kacper stole the gun assigned to his friend and then used this weapon to commit the murders. Once they returned to the unit after the robbery, Kacper threw the gun away and also burned down all the security camera tapes in a bonfire.

Kacper realizes that his time is up and changes his plan accordingly in order to protect himself. By now, Gadacz had used his technique of emotional manipulation to convince Bartek to confess to the robbery, but Kacper finds Bartek first and kills his friend. He then goes on to kill Marek in self-defense before handing himself over to the police and claiming that Marek was the one who had roped him into the plan.

The police have to let him go initially because of a lack of enough proof and then realize that he is indeed the main perpetrator. Gadacz meets the soldier friend whom the trio had visited after the robbery. He finds that the trio had visited the soldier the day before and drank vodka with him. The soldier admits that he found his gun missing the next morning, but found it by afternoon lying in one corner of the camp with a few bullets missing.

Kacper becomes a fugitive, and it is Gadacz who eventually finds him at the house of the family that had recently adopted Ewa. Despite his violent nature, Kacper does not intend any harm to come upon his young sister, who has also found a new and promising life now.

Kacper steps out of the house and pretends to be carrying a gun, which leads to the police unit shooting him dead.