{"id":12638,"date":"2019-09-25T10:00:27","date_gmt":"2019-09-25T17:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=12638"},"modified":"2019-09-28T14:45:49","modified_gmt":"2019-09-28T21:45:49","slug":"review-the-golden-glove","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/review-the-golden-glove\/","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW: <i>The Golden Glove<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>The Golden Glove<\/em><\/strong> is the remarkably unpleasant true story of a German serial killer in the 1970s, told with matter-of-fact, steely-eyed brutality by Turkish-German filmmaker Fatih Akin. Jonas Dassler is uglied up real good to play Fritz Honda, a hunched, oily psycho with a wispy mustache lingering under his bulbous, blackhead-covered nose. He is the sort of person who inspires you to say, &#8220;OK, that makes sense,&#8221; when you learn that he is a serial killer. He hangs out in the title tavern, a dingy place with cigarette butts on the floor, always full of passed-out drunks, lumpy prostitutes, and old bags with cold sores. Fritz befriends some of these ladies, taking advantage of their low self-esteem to abuse them before killing them. Bodies are partially disposed of, but the remnants he keeps hidden in a back cupboard, blaming the Greeks downstairs for the smell.<\/p>\n<p>Akin is unflinching in presenting this miserable story. The murders tend to happen in long, unbroken takes, coming after impressively choreographed fighting and struggling in Fritz&#8217;s squalid apartment. The actual onscreen violence is only moderately graphic, but the tension that precedes it and the vulnerability of the disheveled, oft-nude actors are excruciating. The film draws its style from <em>Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer<\/em> and is, like that seminal thriller, a technically precise and well-made movie that I have no desire to watch again. But unlike it, <em>The Golden Glove<\/em> fails to reveal any of its killer&#8217;s psychology: He&#8217;s a psycho; he hurts; he kills; the end. I don&#8217;t see how the film is of any value other than as a technical exercise (for filmmakers and actors, not murderers), but the craft of it is undeniable. <a href=\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/crookedc.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12642\" src=\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/crookedc.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"21\" height=\"24\" srcset=\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/crookedc.png 21w, https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/crookedc-224x245.png 224w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 21px) 100vw, 21px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>(Screened at Fantastic Fest)<\/em><\/p>\n<h3>Grade: <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">B<\/span><\/h3>\n<h5>1 hr., 50 min.; not rated but almost certainly in NC-17 territory for graphic violence and nudity; in German with subtitles<\/h5>\n<hr \/>\n<h6>Join our <a href=\"http:\/\/crookedmarquee.us16.list-manage.com\/subscribe?u=dc6679cd997ec610eeaf50562&amp;id=db71dbf4c3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">mailing list<\/a>! Follow us on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/CrookedMarquee\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Twitter<\/a>! <a href=\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/writers-guidelines\/\">Write<\/a>\u00a0for us!<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Golden Glove is the remarkably unpleasant true story of a German serial killer in the 1970s, told with matter-of-fact, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":12639,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1381,1416,340],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","category-festivals","category-movie-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}