Der goldene Handschuh

Based on a true story. Keep that in mind when this movie sucks you down into the abyss of one of post war West-Germany's darkest rough places. It's a biopic, not a horror-movie. People say that this movie was all about shock value and grossly exaggerated, or a "wannabe Lars von Trier" flick ... but this is the movie Lars von Trier wishes he would have come up with. The settings are an exact 1:1 replica of the original sites. The bar "Der Goldene Handschuh" in Hamburg still exists to this day and frankly hasn't changed much since then. Fritz Honka's flat was carefully recreated, the storyline and characters pictured is authentic as close as it gets. This also means that it isn't very pleasant to the eye.

The story takes us to a journey to the alcoholic dark underclass scene of the 1970's in Hamburg's Reeperbahn, close the harbor, following one of Germanys most infamous serial killers, Fritz Honka speaking with a strong East-German dialect. Mind you, this is not a Hollywood picture and it's one of those movies that would never get an Academy Award even though cinematography, costumes, acting and set-design is beyond astonishing. It's just too real. More often than not the picture is layered behind a thick cigarette smoke layer inside nicotine yellowed walls. The soundtrack solely consists of contemporary German "Schlager"music, including Honka's favorite song "Es geht eine Träne auf Reisen" ("A tear goes on a journey") ... all those songs are just harmless contemporary witnesses but add so much to the dense atmosphere and convert them into the sickish part of the narration.

I'm a big fan of gritty movies but this movie showed me that I've seen nothing yet. Frankly I had to stop the movie about three times because it was just too HEAVY. It's graphic, it's gross, it's too much at times. And yet I consider it one of the best indie movies of the last decade. It is in lieu of Gaspar Noé's "Seul contre tous" (I stand alone) exept ... this really happened. As pictured.

Well I never heard of Fatih Akin before but if all his movies are like this one then I will for sure watch others from him. Der Goldene Handschuh (The Golden Glove) is harsh and brutal but most important a perfect reenactment of the vile things the German serial Killer Fritz Honka commited. Also a great job from Jonas Dassler with his character of Honka. And big credits to the make-up artists that transformed all the characters into what they looked like. The whole cast acted well and gave this movie the perfect depressing state they're in. The scenes look like they are shot in the filthiest places of Sankt Pauli in Hamburg. Some scenes, well almost all of them, are really brutal, and that's how it should be when you make a movie about a serial killer. Honka was a deranged bully and sadist. To me The Golden Glove is one of the better movies about an existing serial killer. Not for everybody, but certainly well made.

Not for the fainthearted. Not even for the worldly cynical. This is not enjoyable in the conventional entertainment sense: it is brutal, repulsive, despairing, terrible and powerful. It depicts the marginal lower depths of human filth, driven by its single appetite and relentless, amoral need to satisfy it.

Technically the film is a marvel, the production design and the atmosphere created means the scenes have the stench of depravity and human waste, especially in Honka's attic. Similarly, the photography and editing are compelling, and that all says that the director has done the job.

The actors are excellent, the make-up artists too, who made them into degenerate hopeless alcoholics, but the lead, Dassler as Honka, has to be noted because he has incarnated this role to an awful degree. Without that performance the film might falter, be more like a movie, not as document of murder.

If Fritz Lang could see this film, he'd be proud, because it has the same ruthless eye that he had in his German films. It takes the audience into the middle of a horror and never lets go.

This is a grotesque interpretation of a novel apparently inspired by a real-life 1970s serial killer. The film was hated by most critics, particularly in its festival debut, because it was considered too repellent and sensational. Conversely, I suspect mainstream horror fans won't like it because it's not crafted like a suspense film-the kills are presented in a depressing, banal rather than "exciting" way.

It's a tough movie to watch, but for reasons that I think are strengths: You rarely see this kind of bleak underside of life depicted accurately in movies. Even films like "Barfly" that purport to also be about alcoholic Skid Row types generally cast the most glamorous actors possible, and make their characters' poverty, self-destruction etc. look sort of "quirky" and "colorful." Here, even the (very few) attractive characters are presented in the worst 70s clothes and hairstyles (with terrible period German pop music in the background), while most of the figures here are old, ugly and conspicuously unhealthy. (It's kind of amazing afterward to look up the cast on IMBD afterward, and see all their nice, clean publicity photos-you'd swear they emptied out a homeless shelter for many of the roles, rather than using professional actors with long resumes.)

It's an incredibly bleak milieu that is its own answer to the question of why police didn't track down this killer sooner-he, and his victims (also drunks and/or prostitutes), were all people that German society had long ago given up on. No one cared about them, or whether they went missing.

You can fault the film for giving very limited "insight" into the protagonist or why he murdered. But he's clearly just a mentally deficient person just functional enough to support himself, so he did not fall into the hands of authorities that might have diagnosed and treated his considerable problems. The lead's performance is so convincingly repellent that I was stunned to see that he's actually a very handsome, young actor-here his age is indeterminate, and his physical acting/makeup is subtle enough that you really think you're watching a somewhat disabled and disfigured person rather than a clever performer's approximation of one.

Anyway, it's a thoroughly unpleasant movie whose characters are profane in the dumbest and crudest ways, whose sexual acts (when they can perform at all) are depicted with nasty vividness, who live in squalor and die in filth. Which, frankly, is probably a pretty accurate depiction of most serial killers' lives and activities. If watching that reality isn't exactly "entertaining," it's nonetheless pretty compelling if you can take it. I wouldn't want to watch a movie with this brutally misanthropic a vision like this very often, but once in a while, it acts as a sort of palate cleanser to remind you that most violence in real life is ugly and pathetic, not an exciting thrill ride.

Set in the lowest of low crusts of West German society in the 1970ies the film is hardly bearable. It is basically the story of a hard core alcoholic killing and dismembering his victims, mostly prostitutes way beyond their prime. You need a schnapps just to get through it and you have to switch off every time a family member enters the room. This being said, the atmosphere is nicely detailed and well set. The title refers to the meeting point of the main characters, a pub of last resort in the Hamburg harbor area.

After witnessing the consequences you want to give up on cigarettes and alcohol for good. So, watch it.