Recensie Big Mäck: Gangsters and gold [Netflix]

Director: Fabienne Hurst, Andreas Spinrath | Script: Fabienne Hurst, Andreas Spinrath | Time to play: 90 minutes | Year: 2023

The match consists of Big Mack – Gangsters and Gold. In 1992, Donald Stellwag was sentenced to nine years in prison for bank robbery. He always maintained the innocence of him. He was only tested after serving his sentence. For years he has been telling his story on talk shows. But in 2009 his name came up again in connection with a high-profile robbery of a jeweler’s van. In this second incident, however, everything looks suspicious. Criminal records are therefore a common thread throughout his life, in which he earned his money mainly from shady trades and crime.

That’s almost unbelievable, now that Stelwag is bedridden with the crew of big mac keeps This documentary about the two strange events that marked his life simplifies everything as much as possible, so that the emphasis is on madness. Reenactments filmed like gangster movies show how the robberies happened, while talking heads confirm every fact or idea. Creators Fabienne Hurst and Andreas Spinrath found a single person to tell all aspects of the story. So if someone says something, so be it.

The film immediately dives into Stellwag’s perspective with the first robbery, without elaborating on his background. Hurst and Spinrath like to add to what happened to Stellwag, as does he. They agree with his talk show claims, of which many snippets are repeated, though he regularly exaggerates. For example, he would have been isolated, which contradicts the best friend in his cell. The film transitions smoothly from the man in bed to glittering jewelery to tough thieves, set to hard hip-hop in the background, for a thrilling story.

Only when Stellwag is once again suspected of complicity in a robbery does he return big mac get to the larger context of your life. Suddenly, in addition to being unlucky, he also turns out to be a barker with a nose for marketing. A new light falls on the man who is now in bed. Full of enthusiasm, he tells how much he made, forcing East Germans to subscribe to magazines that had just come into contact with the trade after the fall of the wall. A casual twist.

In the end, there is no doubt about Stellwag’s innocence in the first case, while all the evidence points to him in the second. For example, a game between truth and fantasy hardly gets off the ground. That made Running with the Devil: The Wild World of John McAfee stronger (released on Netflix last year). In any case, Stellwag is honest about his motives for talk shows: making a lot of money as a gun viewer. finally falls big macwith its sensationalist narrative structure, both because of its strong story and because of the talk shows of the time.

Big Mack – Gangsters and Gold can be seen in Netflix.