Excellent but underrated film

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

"Der Joker" is a 1987 movie from West Germany and it runs for slightly over 90 minutes. The director is Peter Patzak and he also worked on the story. But the only reason why this is still somewhat known today is singer Peter Maffay playing the title character. He was in his 30s at this point. For me, it is really difficult to decide what was the worst about this film, Maffay's performance or the screenplay. Both aspects are majorly disappointing. The funniest thing is probably how they keep trying to show us Maffay's wheelchair bound main character as the ultimate crime-solving bad-ass, who kicks every criminal's ass despite his disability. It's really really cringeworthy combined with Maffay's complete lack of range. Admittedly, his supporting cast here was almost as bad and the soundtrack is an embarrassment too. Not even fans of Maffay's music career 8and there are really many) can say seriously that he or this film he is in here have any quality whatsoever. Next year, it will have its 30th anniversary and this movie is a glorious example of what happens when a lone wolf bad-ass crime movie goes wrong. I highly recommend you to stay far far away. It is so generic, also with the female characters, who have absolutely no impact at all and are 100% stereotypical. Not recommended. Disastruous film.

I give a 6 out of 10, as the movie is not bad at all.But I've never seen something more pathetic, boring and unnatural than the role of Jan Bogdan played by Peter Maffay. As he was (and still is) a big best selling music star director Peter Patzak wanted him as main attraction to push the movie. Maffay only accepted if he was allowed to write his role and dialogue himself. This agreement lets the movie fail despite the good story. All the other actors do their job well, camera, cut, costumes, light, sound and music fit quite well to the eighties. (Okay, the wonder of recovering from a spine injury at the end is not very conclusive but of course part of the concept. Mmh, as I think about it, it reminds a little bit of Clara in "Heidi" :-))

I love this film. Peter Maffay really can't act and he gives his lines in a way (German version) that I was laughing all through the movie. The whole concept is so pathetic and the cheesy score (okay, occasionally it's not that bad) drowns this flick merciless in sentimentality. "Joker" wants to be hard and tough and sometimes it does not look bad at all but it's more the ruin of an interesting concept, spoiled by the leading role and the typical 80ies cheese. Patzak can be a good director and I'm sure if he would have done "Joker" 10 years earlier, with Maurizio Merli for example... (haha), maybe this movie could have been pretty good, who knows. But I don't say that this version actually is bad. It's not bad if you are looking for some good fun. So I give it 4 out of 10 for the movie it wants to be and an unofficial 8 out of 10 for the unintentional comedy it is.

Peter Maffay is not the guy you expect to see in a hard-boiled detective revenge movie. The Romanian-born greasy ballad singer with a certain pseudo-rock and macho image who is a big music star in Germany for 35 years now tried a step into the movies with this German crime movie from 1987.Maffay plays Jan Bogdan, a police detective in Hamburg who becomes seriously hurt during a bomb attack in a restaurant by a brutal killer gang. His good friend has been killed, and Bogdan is bound to the wheelchair now. Filled with anger and thirst for revenge he quits the police and kills his opponents one by one until he finds the heads of the gang... of course there's a good buddy involved, too, and a well-looking dark-haired seduction that both guys are falling in love with, some corrupt policemen, conspiracies, brutal henchmen with black gloves, assassinations, killings, showdowns etc.The direction of crime movie veteran Peter Patzak is well done, but shows some boring lengths in the middle of the plot. The script combines elements of seventies crime action with hard-boiled detective stories, revenge dramas, Italian giallos and mafia movies and of course a lot of bad 80's hard rock ballads... the cast is fine with Tahnee Welch as the sexy girlfriend and first class actors like Armin Mueller-Stahl, Michael York and Elliot Gould (all of them playing bad guys here).Only the choice of Peter Maffay was a big misstep, as his range of acting is limited to the face expressions of a goldfish. Bearing his never changing forced macho style all the time and especially listening to his bad way of stumbling his dialogues together is a pure pain in the ass! Fortunately for movie-goes, Maffay returned only once again on the screens - except for some cameos - in the cliche-ladden adventure drama "Verschollen im Jemen" (Missing in Yemen) in 1999, directed by Patzak, too.Some more details for movie buffs - the bad soundtrack, consisting of greasy digital keyboard tunes and bad 80's "Scorpions" style hard rock ballads, was composed by Maffay and former Rainbow keyboard player Tony Carey who had a short musical career in Germany 20 years ago. Production assistant Otto Retzer later became the director of the cheesy soap opera "Ein Schloss am Woerthersee" and several b-movie adventures such as the strange "Der schwarze Fluch". A nice movie for Maffay worshippers, but not the big jewel to discover for crime genre and film retro fans.