The Screen Addict Recommends – Gladbeck: Das Geiseldrama (2022)

If you want to see a documentary that trumps every single fictionalized Crime-Thriller out there, give the Netflix title Gladbeck: Das Geiseldrama a go.

This utterly captivating doc was put together using only actual footage from the terrifying event that had the entire country of Germany glued to the screen some 35 years ago.

While watching it, I couldn’t help but wonder if the Gladbeck hostage takers perhaps had just seen Al Pacino’s Dog Day Afternoon (1975) before they committed their crime. The similarities are just too striking.

As is often the case with these stories though – truth is stranger (and more gruesome) than fiction. If any of the many incredible twists and turns of the Gladbeck hostage situation would happen in an actual movie, we would never accept it and probably walk out of the cinema booing while hurtling rotten tomatoes at the screen.

The most jarring element of G:DG is its unfiltered documentation of the complete and utter helplessness of the German police at the time. Nothing at all like the cool and in control cops of the movies! Apparently the local police hadn’t the slightest clue of how to deal with hostage takers, and made one ludicrous decision after another – with disastrous consequences.

Seek it out & get your fix.

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