The Golden Glove (2019) - Fatih Akın

Imagine going into this film blind with no reference point beyond this sharing the same director as Soul Kitchen. That person in this hypothetical scenario would be in for one hell of a surprise. I love how ugly and grotesque the film is. It's not great by any means but it knows what it is depicting and just openly embraces all of its nastiest proclivities for ugliness both materially and metaphysically. I don't see this film as having any real layers or subtext, it just places everything in plain sight. Subtlety and psychoanalysis are not the intent here. There is no search for understanding only exhibition, and one needs to look no further than how the main character is portrayed. He is a serial killer resembling a creature more than a man. Physically deformed and mentally rancid, he is emblematic in a figurative sense of the ugliness of such heinous violence. A repulsive, vile film with intent, Akin doesn't want to analyze such depravity and brutality nor prescribe any type of solution or understanding, he simply wants to show it for what it is beyond the need to moralize. I, for one, respect that, despite it not quite managing to be among the very best films of its ilk - Angst, Henry: Portrait of a serial killer, etc.