Film Review: "Gladbeck: The Hostage Crisis" ("Gladbeck: Das Geiseldrama") (2022).

From Netflix and the director of Berlin 1945 comes Gladbeck: The Hostage Crisis (Gladbeck: Das Geiseldrama). This documentary film directed by Volker Heise. In August 1988, two armed bank robbers keep German police at bay for 54 hours during a hostage-taking drama that ends in a shootout and three deaths.

From August 16th to 18th, 1988, the Gladbeck hostage crisis or Gladbeck hostage drama was a bank robbery and hostage-taking that took place in West Germany. Two men with prior criminal records – Hans-Jürgen Rösner and Dieter Degowski – robbed a branch of the Deutsche Bankin Gladbeck, North Rhine-Westphalia, taking two employees as hostages. During their flight, they were joined by Rösner's girlfriend Marion Löblich, with whom they hijacked a public transport bus in Bremen. With twenty-seven hostages aboard, they drove towards the Netherlands, where all but two hostages were released and the bus was exchanged for a getaway car. The hostage-taking was finally ended when the police rammed the getaway car on the A3 motorway near Bad Honnef, North Rhine-Westphalia. During the hostage crisis, a fourteen-year-old boy and an eighteen-year-old woman were killed. A third victim, a thirty one-year-old police officer, died in a traffic accident while chasing the hostage-takers. At the time, the unfolding of events was extensively covered by West German media, which quickly spiraled into a media circus. In the aftermath of the hostage crisis, journalists have been criticised for conducting interviews with the hostage-takers, asking them to pose for photographs, and aiding them by giving them, among other things, coffee and road directions. This resulted in the German Press Council banning any future interviews with hostage-takers during hostage situations.

Watch the film, then turn off your TV, laptop or phone to reflect, or go on a walk and acknowledge what a privilege it is to live life outside captivity. Because the last thing you'd want to be is a prisoner in your own home. The news footage and interviews themselves are gripping, as they range from touching to frightening. In many cases, watching this series is to be a witness to the innocence of the well-meaning brushing up against the trauma of the brutalized, and it's not pretty. This offshoot of the true-crime genre is another effective way to experience the worst moments in other people's lives from a safe distance. If additional seasons of the series make their way to Netflix in the coming years, one hopes that Heise will learn to better let these stories - of survival, struggle, human nature, and chilling circumstance - speak for themselves. The film demonstrates how its focus on the here-and-now hobbles its attempt to tell a more resonant story. The film does something daring with the interviews. He will juxtapose comments that are contradictory, not necessarily in fact but in interpretation or emphasis. This creates a kind of stereo effect that enlarges the film. The film is a compelling topic, and the series certainly delivers the expected drama, albeit in a heavy-handed manner, meaning those looking for a docu-diversion should find it worthy of delving into.

Simon says Gladbeck: The Hostage Crisis (Gladbeck: Das Geiseldrama) receives: