Fatih Akin is one of the most interesting German authors of the 21st century. From the very beginnings and the first films, Akin proved to be the author of a recognizable style and a man interested in the fringes of society. They were usually immigrant communities from Turkey and he probably best of all portrayed the life of German Turks on film. And when he later dealt with other silent topics, it was inventive, controversial and even shocking (just remember “The Golden Glove”, a creepy film about a serial killer), so “Rheingold” was both a team and a bigger disappointment for me. It is a biographical drama about the German gangsta rapper of Kurdish origin, Giwar Hajabi, based on whose autobiography Akin made the film.
But it’s a film that feels like a pale copy of similar American films about rappers, like that fictionalized biography in which Eminem played himself or the German version of “Straight Outta Compton.” Akin completely embraced that Hollywood style and made a visually interesting and inspired directed film that, unfortunately, is rather uninteresting. All these gangsta rappers seem so pretentious to me anyway, with their stories, pretense and jerks, and this American gangsta style has obviously been accepted by this guy. Even at the beginning, while following Hajabi, who later took on the stage name Xatar, which would mean Dangerous, it seemed that “Rheingold” could be one of those films that slightly ironizes all those similar biographical crime dramas of rappers.
Unfortunately, this did not happen, although the beginning was promising and indeed Giwar’s life story is one of those true cinematic ones, but by the end “Rheingold” turned into an almost poser film in which Akin seems to be trying to copy Guy Ritchie’s style from his famous “Snatch” phase. . Giwar’s parents were Iranian Kurds, musicians, who fled to the mountains after the revolution there in 1979, so he too was born in a cave full of bats. With the help of the Red Cross, they arrived in Paris, and when he was a boy, they came to Bonn, where as a boy he started dealing weed, smuggling porn, fighting with local Turks, and soon became interested in the hip-hop scene. But instead, he will end up in criminal waters, he will connect with the Kurdish mafia from Amsterdam, engage in gold robbery and finally end up in prison, where he will finally secretly record his first albums.
Although the idea of recording the life story of a war refugee who grew up to become a serious criminal and then become a music star and a successful publisher and entrepreneur sounds very interesting at first, “Rheingold” failed to deliver as expected. And that’s primarily because Akin apparently decided to betray himself and, after the appealing first part, make a film that looks like a copy of some mediocre American film. A film full of clichés, completely predictable situations and characters, and quite disappointing.