The Golden Glove (2019) User Reviews

Believe it or not, this happened as pictured.

[rising-down · 8/10 · 27 September 2019]

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.

Brutal

[ferdinand1932 · 8/10 · 27 October 2019]

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.

Ick...in a good way, I guess

[ofumalow · 7/10 · 8 December 2019]

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.

How every serial killer should be portrayed

[susana-c-fernandes · 7/10 · 14 September 2019]

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.

Wow...

[zeelu-89550 · 7/10 · 13 February 2020]

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.

Not for everybody, but certainly well made.

[deloudelouvain · 8/10 · 29 October 2019]

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.

If you want to quit drinking, watch this movie.

[raoul-naegele · 6/10 · 20 May 2021]

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.

Tarantino: eat your heart out!

[lucien-staarink · 10/10 · 27 September 2020]

You will probably not like this movie. It is so harsh and rude at moments. You probably will laugh at some of the absurdist scenes of the drunken sad people in the sleazy 70's bar. It really draws you into the harsh sad lives of the characters. This is a true story about a serial killer. Often these kinds of movies are made in a matter of factness style, but what happens in this one is that it is all enveloped in an air of rudeness and sadness, by some overdramatization. At times this turns out in a kind of absurdist humor that is just perfect in it's kind (and actually really funny), but than all of a sudden it shocks into a vile hateful violence that actually hurts you as a viewer. This is why I wrote my title: Tarantino and the like might seem violent, but really they have a Hollywood glamour over them. If you want to view and experience a glimpse of how the violence of a twisted serial killer might actually feel: Watch this.

This is beyond liking and disliking. This is about experiencing.

A sordid description of a serial killer as miserable as loathsome

[FrenchEddieFelson · 7/10 · 2 July 2019]

The action of this excellent film revolves in the 70s around « Zum Goldene Handschuh », a shabby bar with an ultra-rough reputation in the suburbs of Hamburg, frequented by prostitutes as old as ugly, drinking Schnapps as I drink water during a heat wave, ... and Fritz Honka, a particularly barbaric serial killer and excellently interpreted by Jonas Dassler. The atmosphere is sordid at will, the characters are pathetic and the plot twists are barbaric. Sensitive souls should abstain!

I do not really understand the manifold comparisons with the film The House That Jack Built (2018). Although the film is about a serial killer, in my humble opinion, the analogy stops right there. Indeed, although this film takes place in Germany in the 70s, I often had the impression to read a bleak and dark book of French literature of the 19th century, such as La maison Tellier (Guy de Maupassant, 1881), Nana (Émile Zola, 1880) or Les Misérables (Victor Hugo, 1862). Moreover, apart from this literary comparison, I also recognized a few scenes from the well-known Belgian movie C'est arrivé près de chez vous (1992), especially the early-morning scene during which we discover higgledy-piggledy corpses in a kitchen, after a naughty sexual orgy.

As a synthesis: desperately dark and disturbingly violent.

A movie you can smell

[captain_astronaut · 4/10 · 29 March 2021]

Everyone is sweaty and greasy, and the atmosphere is thick with garbage. The acting was fine, and the period was accurate, but it was actually pretty dull.

The perfect recreation of the brutal reality.

[tbotlik · 10/10 · 17 October 2019]

The movie shows us the real side of an alcoholic psychopath's everyday life. Agression, violence and drinking tremendously. The main part is an insight of the main characters thoughts and feelings. The movie feels very realistic. Both the clothes, and the places. The music and the german language fits the movie really well. The people are very "real", and because of it also a bit scarry. The movie has a really nice grove to it, and sometimes it manages to scare the audience with the audio, but is feels just right. Not too much, not too little. I will recomend this movie to everyone, because people should be aware, that animals like this still exist.

He brings them to a sad end

[killercharm · 6/10 · 23 December 2022]

Is THIS hard to watch. This is a gruesome but effective biopic about German serial killer Fritz Honka, who killed in the 1970s. Though he has a job he still lives in dreary squalor. He drinks his life away, taking old hookers home from his favorite haunt, Der Goldene Handschuh, a rundown watering hole. Once he gets these women home he kills them, dismembers their bodies and stashes them in his walls, leading guests and neighbors to complain of the stench. Nonetheless the complaints go unheeded by authorities. Honka leads a nasty little life, as do his poor victims. He brings them to a sad end.

But why?

[redcore-2 · 3/10 · 8 May 2019]

This film is definitely disgusting and disturbing. I wouldn't call this a problem, by any means. The problem occurs, when you fail to see any point to it's disturbing/disgusting nature. It all seems to be pure shock value, which would have been fine in campy low-budget flick with no artistic pretense. But this film tries to fool you into thinking it is actually art. Yet, when you scratch the mixture of blood, schnapps, fecal matter, and sexual inadequacy that is the surface of this work, you don't find any substance.

All that being said, the acting and cinematography are brilliant.

Congratulations to the make-up team

[jack_o_hasanov_imdb · 7/10 · 28 August 2021]

It was an interesting movie.

Performances were very good.

You will definitely not enjoy the movie. It's not an enjoyable movie.

The adaptation from the true story is chilling.

Jonas Dassler has done a great job. Congratulations to the make-up team, after watching the movie I realized that it was make-up.

A very unsettling realism

[LUIS · 7/10 · 15 September 2020]

This film achieves a very unsettling realism. You come out with a bad body

Brutal and good

[jaynzsarah-561-359737 · 8/10 · 20 October 2019]

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

interesting.

[deadbull-95171 · 6/10 · 8 April 2023]

This was undoubtedly interesting. And, I really enjoyed it. But here's the thing: It's lauded for it's spectacular realism. While certainly entertaining, with one scene in particular that is so grotesque that it becomes frankly comedic, I wasn't present for these events, nor was any other living witness, so while it might have the number of victims correct, I don't see how this could possibly be called "realistic." It is just an over the top speculation and amusement.

How? For starters, head over to YT and look at the actual guy (Fritz Honka) interviewed, or his courtroom presence. He is far from the deformed twist-faced freak staggering around in the movie. In reality he is a very collected, clerkish, mousy looking man, like an accountant from some old Russian novel, the "Overcoat" comes to mind.

The movie turns him into a galumphing circus freak with a huge twisted nose, and hunchback staggering, which doesn't bear the remotest resemblance to the real man. I extrapolate the rest. I lived in Hamburg for two years in the 90's and am very acquainted with the St. Pauli area. It was noted for it's prostitution and S/M scene, and now it may well be noted for it's software distribution, but I never saw anything as squalid as the scenes depicted here, which isn't to say there was some crevice of the city I never went to.

But the squalor is part of the atmosphere of this fiction. And it provides many freakish amusements. The sort of amusement people got in London watching the Elephant Man. His makeup should bring Merrick's deformities to mind.

But who am I to argue with the directorial decision to trump this up into a depraved side show? There are more or less two fused movies here. There are the moments of murder and there, and this is the larger part, the up close and personal tour of the bar scene, centering around the Golden Glove. When I lived in Chicago 50 years ago, south Clark street had some of the roughest bars around, the sort of places that Richard Speck, remember him?, hung out in, and I checked those out, out of my own morbid curiosity when I was young, and you didn't look at a person the wrong way in those places. Not for a split second, and looking at them ANY sort of way was the wrong way. They were genuinely bad and dangerous places.

By comparison the Golden Glove has a sleazy and abusive sort of comradery about it, sickening and abusive yes, but involving regular who know what buttons to push. "Barfly" with Mickey Rourke, pre-self mutilated, and Faye Dunaway, inhabit that world, based on the adventures of the wildly overrated poet Bukowski, who puts in a cameo in that movie. And THAT movie is, I think, a much more realistic stylization of a very real bar scene.

Anyway, reviewing these reviews , the recurrent theme is the wonderful realism. I disagree. But viewed on it's own terms, a highly exaggerated depiction of squalor, it captures a certain tone of anger and depravity that is real enough as an emotion, felt more by the viewer, then the people being viewed. Put another way, the person vomiting feels relief, but the person who has it splattered all over his coat has a very different feeling.

Still, a unique and intelligent piece of work.

This is not a "serial killer movie"

[prathert · 10/10 · 30 January 2020]

Even the many very positive reviews here, a needed corrective to the professional reviewers who trashed this film at its openings, seem to be missing the best thing about this film. The praise for the make-up artists, cinematographers, set designers, costuming etc are all spot on. But everyone seems to accept the "serial killer movie" assumption. Yes, it's about a man who murders four women over a period of years. But that is not the only story that this film is telling anymore than The Joker is just another movie about clowns.

Grotesque

[bastos · 7/10 · 4 January 2021]

Grotesque is the word that comes to my mind when thinking about this film. It is such a raw and bizarre experience that I have trouble trying to put it in words. Every situation and character is so unique that it seems taken from another planet, but I have a feeling this is closer to reality than most other serial killer movies. Technically this is a very well made movie where the production design and make-up are a standout. A final word of praise for all the cast, specially for Jonas Dassler that is just amazing in a very brave role beneath all the make-up.

Serial killer movie without glamorisation

[skrt99420 · 30 January 2024]

Those who rated this movie under a 7 may have misunderstood its intent. This film portrays the harsh reality of a serial killer without Hollywood's glamorization. It's a challenging watch, reflecting the darkness authentically it's not meant to be pretty to watch. The German actors deliver phenomenal performances, and criticizing the movie solely based on its intensity is a disservice to their hard work. Show some respect for the actors and every person on set who helped crafting a gritty and realistic portrayal of a serial killer. The genuine and dark atmosphere this movie projects is something special. I do not recommend it for movie night with friends and family lmao ... It's something you better enjoy alone.

A waste of many chances

[Waedliman · 3/10 · 23 February 2021]

I grew up in Germany and have a different impression of this film than many here. For one thing, it is not a story about post-war Germany. It is the description of an outsider in a brutalised society. There are outsiders everywhere, yesterday as well as today. Hamburg is still known for its milieu today. The area around the Reeperbahn, where this film is set, still exists today in one way or another. Director Akin lives there and knows the people, which you notice very quickly in the original language. The people often speak dialect and have the typical dry Hanseatic manner. Big plus points for this attention to detail. But now comes my problem with this film, because I cannot understand why a good director would approach such a subject in this way. Every scene made me uncomfortable, I felt embarrassed and was partly bored by the absurdities Akin interspersed. I also didn't find the film well rounded in terms of acting, with some brilliant performances (Jonas Dassler) alongside amateurs whose bias was obvious. And in the end, the crucial question for me is why so much effort is put into a subject that is quickly told. The world is bad, man is scum, there is little hope, the end.

A twisted film but a real one. Jonas Dassler's performance makes it all

[Rodrigo_Amaro · 8/10 · 7 June 2020]

One must wonder what director Fatih Akin was thinking in bringing to life the story of German serial killer Fritz Honka, famous for several murders of prostitutes in the early 1970's. Akin's previous film "In the Fade" was a powerful dramatic effort that seemed a lot more of a real story than this insanely bizarre film. If the idea behind "The Golden Glove" was to conceive the most disgusting and unappealing film ever made, to depict the art of grotesque and how crazed some people and some lives are, then he made a glorious film. But I'm not condemning the film; in fact, I've find it very good though explicitly graphic and twisted as I haven't seen in ages. The director has some good cards to make his game and the trick works because he's anchored with great subtle technique that makes the experience interesting and the excellent performance of Jonas Dassler, a brave young man who undress himself from vanity and fear to create one of the most frightening, sickening, ugliest characters to ever live. The make-up department did an outstanding job in turning the handsome Dassler into the bizarre-looking Honka; the rest is up to Dassler to imitate his speech pattern due to a speech impediment the real Honka had. Here's a chamaleonic star we will be seeing a lot in more films.

It seemed at the beginning of this review I'd be detracting the movie but nope. Warning for possible future viewers: this isn't a nice experience (it's not supposed to, anyway) but it's definitely one of those films where you'll be walking out in disgust, or criticizing it harshly without looking objectively or just pointing that it's a pointless film. The very first scene is a clear indicative of that with a long shot, no cuts, of Honka killing his first victim. Sickening!

To me, like similarly themed one such as "Angst" or "Henry: Portrait of a Killer" it's a way to have a deep look inside criminal minds, their acts and behaviors, and on an ultimate case, to see what the media doesn't show to you. There's a strange sense of curiosity as well in seeing how film directors approach brutal subjects: if they're just making psycho-analytical films with a sense of making the audience think or if it's just gory exploitation that doesn't develop to anything. "The Golden Glove" almost falls into the second trap but Mr. Akin gives us little moments in between gruesome murders to explore the personality of Honka, his pathetic miserable life which seems to present a "reasoning" behind his murders - another case of a man with a turbulent childhood and psychological problems came along. It's a sheer reality, it doesn't go easy nor should be.

However, the bumps along the way also makes the film strange to see it. The bar from the title is there to put some relief on audiences, a place where Honka is a regular meeting another sort of odd characters, heavy drinkers as he is but inside there it's all about awkward/dark comic situations - and the film is full of that. Nervous laughters for some; distractive for others. To me, it was a plot point to connect beginning and ending; just like the pretty blonde girl Honka fantasizes about from time to time while he's having his strange sexual encounters with old, fat prostitutes, later his victims. Outside of the fantasy inside his head, the girl appears three times; other than that, it's all a perverted wet-dream of a sick man. A little question of absurd: he's a bad Quasimodo of all sorts but since he's the one who favors paying for sex why is he always chasing old hookers?

Demanding sex-workers back then, but really, we don't have such a scene to explore more of Honka's failures as a man and we're barely told that he was married twice.

And as for accuracies, the film jumps facts and events or place them in the wrong period (1970-1974 was the years of Fritz crimes but we get the impression one or two years has passed).

And we get back to wondering about the real aim of the picture. It'll possibly looked as just another nasty story made by an insane mind; or that quality over substance again is overshadowed (at times it feels that - the long takes, camera angles and movements, the real feeling of being part of 1970's Germany) but there isn't enough material to make us stunned. If we look the film as a the tragic horror story with real people, the aim of making audiences terrified, nervous, nauseated, Mr. Akin delivers a spetacle of which I cannot feel unimpressed with mixed thoughts about how such individual as Honka could ever exist. The power of imagination must never be lost, and by that I mean that it's not just going back in time to get a true feeling of things that the film works, but many times I kept imagining the scents and the stench of Honka's tiny apartment, always unclean, smelly due to the corpses left. Akin puts those settings - there and the bar - where you are in awe with everything, it's like 90% of excrutiating moments for the remaining 10% of curiosity is what makes some of us keep going to see what's gonna happen next. I can't think of a current director who can do that with a material such as this. Or anything else, really.

If anything of the tiny bits of qualities exposed here as why the picture works or if it's interesting don't convince you, at least you cannot deny that Dassler's creepy, violent and twisted performance is one in a lifetime. He is transformed not just physically but there are insightful moments where you can enter his mind, the inner abysm of Honka or at least the ideal the director makes of him. The sequence where he befriends a pretty woman on his job as a night guard is one of those surprising moments when he's all awkward near her, quite polite at the same time finding ways to be around her but it's played for a long time as a contrast to the brutality he treats the older women (one of them becomes his maid, practically, of whom he's very abusive). The subtle and little moments of change of him is what made me going. To see what comes next... 8/10.

The Golden Glove

[M0n0_bogdan · 7/10 · 9 October 2023]

Fatih Akin is a very capable director. He has proven it many times.

If, after you watch this movie or even while you watch this movie, you get a very strong feeling of being sick or disgusted then the purpose of this film has been fulfilled. It is disgusting and pungent and putrid. For me, if a film is able to convey these feelings from me then it's as effective as a thriller where the suspense is created or comedy where laughter is the product or romance where lovey-dovey emotions are pooped out.

This is an ugly film and it embraces that completely, it is gratuitous and artistic only in the sense of the balance of what Akin shows or not and can still be effective.

I need a shower now.

Overall OK, but not great

[mika2846 · 5/10 · 22 July 2020]

I think there are some very nice shots in this Movie, but overall in my opinion the camera remains to static. The music is often annoying and overused. The story is true and it's narrated very well, but I'm missing a climax. You have the feeling that something big will happen at the end, but its just not satisfiying...

Authentic and Disturbing!

[GothicGretch · 7/10 · 24 September 2023]

The Golden Glove is a unique and sinister horror flick. It features an interesting plot, disturbing violence, great acting, and realistic makeup effects. It's one of the few movies that has left me feeling disturbed. The fact that the movie is based on a an actual serial killer makes it even more gruesome. The filmmakers did an incredible job at getting the characters to resemble their real-life counterparts. At the end, they show pictures of the actual individuals involved, and it's shocking how closely they matched. I could see the film being slow and potentially boring to some, but it all comes together. It's one of those movies I felt a little bored while watching, but afterward, I realized how well done it was. It's important to note that this film is incredibly disturbing, and shouldn't be viewed by people with weak stomachs. Though a slower movie, I really enjoyed the artistic production.