Gladbeck

If only police, politicians and press had known what they were doing back then - 1988 when this incident happened - as well as director Kilian Riedhoff in fact knows his job! Nothing like this would have happened! Smart and sharp edged his work is keeping the spectator in the sniper position, always observing the hostage-taker through a virtual telescope never looking away, constantly ready to fire. A brillant thriller/drama/document about a sad and disturbing true story.

As a Dutch national living in Hamburg, I am not a big fan of German TV-drama. Most productions are unrealistic, melodramatical or far too psychological. Gladbeck however is a great exception. I can only confirm other reviews, that this movie shows what actually happened, how strange the events may seem. I remember the hijacking very well, because it partly took place in the Netherlands too. The acting is superb, the production design is (almost, with just some minor errors) perfect. It shows how much fear the authorities had to take responsibilty and move to action. I hope this will set the standard for coming German TV-productions. Very good indeed!

One might think that the plot is quite constructed and far away from realistic, because the behaviour of police and journalists looks too strange in this story. But all this stuff is extremely close to reality.

I remember the actual crime and the hunt taking place in Germany very close to my home in northrhine-westphalia, and I remember the repeated shocks and disbelieve I was in when all the television broadcasts rushed over the screens. Now, 30 years later, the mini series remembers us of what happened back in 1988.

The film makers say they added fictional elements to the plot and that of course must be true because just for example, police internal dialogues could not have been reconstructed this way. But in my opinion this film looks like it is very close to what really happened. Many if not all of the earlier television news are minutely reproduced with the actors and placed within the movie. I was thrown backwards in time while watching the film and watching again this failure of police and journalism.

This is not only a police thriller but in times a heartbreaking story about fear and loss. It is the best German television production I have seen in years. Very intense!

A study in extreme incomepetence. It must have been extremely embarrasing for the German police at the time.

Too bad the film makers used hand held camera, some scenes are almost unwatchable.

The film is certainly one of the better German productions, and almost all the other reviews here are right about its positive aspects. It's shot brilliantly and the 80's production design is spot on. Sascha Alexander Gersak as Hans-Jürgen Rösner is simply incredible. Otherwise I never completely agree with most of my fellow Germans about good acting; personally I think in many cases there is a fakeness, something too staged about the way many German star actors speak. But that may be a matter of taste and it's not my point. My grievance is about the ending. Maybe I have seen some cut home entertainment version and the TV version was longer, but the decision to not continue telling the story in the same denseness than the first 85 minutes of the film and simply rushing to the end feels like a cheat. Yes, I already know the director's and producer's explanation: Everybody knows what horrible end the crisis took, everybody has seen the images of this first media-covered (in Germany) hostage crisis, so why repeat them here? Very simple: Because A) not everyone has seen the images and B) as many, many other re-tellings of real life happenings have shown, there is an indisputable fascination to seeing familiar images from a different angle never before seen. The series 'Chernobyl' comes to mind. Don't get me wrong: I don't need to see the hostages getting shot, but watching this rushed ending after sitting through nail-bitingly thrilling 85 minutes left me hollow. I also found the decision astounding: Why did they shoot all those scenes and then only use them in such a compendious way? It seems the broadcasters or producers forced the director to do so. I can't imagine he wanted it that way. Just my 10 cents.