Il mostro di St. Pauli

Loved it excellent film grim and grotesque... don't listen to bad ratings they don't have the stomach

The Golden Glove is a solid horror movie. The acting is excellent, the movie swings from fun, to shocking, to dramatic while showing us the reality of a country broken by war and poverty. It's also a brutal and raw view on a disgusting person, the main character, responsible for the murders of several hopeless women in the 70s. Serial killers aren't glamorous or awe inducing personalities as they're usually sold to be by the media. This movie is a good reminder of that. Along with the main character (amazing performance!), there are other very colorful characters that complete this picture and make The Golden Glove an entertaining and disturbing experience, not fit for sensitive viewers.

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.

Acting is really really good, love the atmosphere/camera work, and great story. Can be graphic at times, brings in all kinds of emotions. Highly recommend.

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.