Gladbeck
- TV Mini Series
- 20182018
Based on the true story that shocked a nation in the summer of 1988 and revealed the scandalizing amount of errors committed by the media and the police in a half-baked attempt to rescue hos... Read allBased on the true story that shocked a nation in the summer of 1988 and revealed the scandalizing amount of errors committed by the media and the police in a half-baked attempt to rescue hostages.Based on the true story that shocked a nation in the summer of 1988 and revealed the scandalizing amount of errors committed by the media and the police in a half-baked attempt to rescue hostages.
As life slows down on a hot summer's day in 1988, an armed bank robbery goes awry. While fleeing from the police, the two gangsters take an entire busload hostage. The ensuing manhunt, however, turns into a disaster. The police make fools of themselves with their amateurish operations and, above all, are obstructed by the nation's media who swoop down on the events in their rat race for the juiciest pictures and live interviews with the kidnappers. As Rösner, the driving force of the duo, orchestrates their 54 hours of fame in cold blood, his accomplice Degowski derives sinister pleasure from manipulating the media. But Degowski is also unpredictable and violent. When he loses his nerve and kills a teenage passenger in the bus, the two men choose two young women as their hostages while leaping into another getaway vehicle. Thus begins an odyssey that goes completely out of control. —Happy_Evil_Dude
Top review
Good film, but ...
The film is certainly one of the better German productions, and almost all the other reviews here are right about its positive aspects. It's shot brilliantly and the 80's production design is spot on. Sascha Alexander Gersak as Hans-Jürgen Rösner is simply incredible. Otherwise I never completely agree with most of my fellow Germans about good acting; personally I think in many cases there is a fakeness, something too staged about the way many German star actors speak. But that may be a matter of taste and it's not my point. My grievance is about the ending. Maybe I have seen some cut home entertainment version and the TV version was longer, but the decision to not continue telling the story in the same denseness than the first 85 minutes of the film and simply rushing to the end feels like a cheat. Yes, I already know the director's and producer's explanation: Everybody knows what horrible end the crisis took, everybody has seen the images of this first media-covered (in Germany) hostage crisis, so why repeat them here? Very simple: Because A) not everyone has seen the images and B) as many, many other re-tellings of real life happenings have shown, there is an indisputable fascination to seeing familiar images from a different, angle. The series 'Chernobyl' comes to mind. Don't get me wrong: I don't need to see the hostages getting shot, but watching this rushed ending after sitting through nail-bitingly thrilling 85 minutes left me hollow. I also found the decision astounding: Why did they shoot all those scenes and then only use them in such a compendious way? It seems the broadcasters or producers forced the director to do so. I can't imagine he wanted it that way. Just my 10 cents.
helpful•30
- Fred_Mopkopf
- Apr 2, 2020
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