Sign In. The Golden Glove Hide Spoilers. 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 The settings are an exact 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 '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. I'm a big fan of gritty movies but this movie showed me that I've seen nothing yet. 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. As pictured. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote. 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.
