Review: Dobermann

Vincent Cassel is criminal Yann Le Pentec, the titular canine being his nickname. He’s the leader of a group of whacked-out crims, including his deaf mute girlfriend Nat (who is played by Mrs. Cassel, Monica Bellucci). They are planning a big heist, whilst a veteran cop (Tcheky Karyo) pursues them, though years of chasing Dobermann may have rendered him crazier than the thieves he is chasing. And believe me, Dobermann and his gang are pretty ‘out there’.

 

There’s a bloody good reason why you’ve probably never heard of this wannabe-cool 1997 action/crime flick from French-Dutch director Jan Kounen (whose subsequent “Blueberry” was flawed but vastly superior to this) and screenwriter Joel Houssin (who has worked mainly in French TV, it appears). Like 2006’s unbearable “Sheitan” (also starring Vincent Cassel, a dynamic and accomplished actor when he wants to be), this is an excruciatingly in-your-face, irritating piece of crap that will truly test your patience.

 

Right from the word go you know you’re in for a real chore as a stupid, poorly animated opening credits design has a gun-toting anthropomorphised dog pissing on the credits. Yep. I could end the review there, really, because the dog really did speak for me I’m afraid. Cassel and real-life wife Monica Bellucci are immediately terrible here, playing wannabe “Natural Born Killers” in a film that might be even worse than that one. That takes some doing, let me tell you. Mr. Kounen has obviously grown up on a steady diet of “Natural Born Killers”, “Pulp Fiction”, and “A Clockwork Orange”. Well, at least the last one is kind of a classic. But visually this is just too busy and obnoxiously in-your-face that you feel it’s all a put-on. As such, I never became drawn into the story.

 

The acting is just as ham-fisted as the filmmaking, with everyone seemingly told to pitch their performances somewhere in between Juliette Lewis in “Natural Born Killers” and Gary Oldman in “Leon: The Professional”, another film (and performance) I’m not in love with. Bellucci is particularly badly used here, playing a deaf mute, she mugs a lot. Embarrassingly. She has also looked far better than she does here. At one point she gets shot in the arse. It’s a fleeting moment, and I only know because staring at her arse proved the only entertainment value in the entire film. As for Mr. Cassel, well the film might be slightly more digestible than “Sheitan” I suppose, but they’re both appalling.

 

If the film is just one big joke, then it has been so overpitched that the joke is ruined. The close-ups are an eye-sore, and the film is just as boring as it is annoying because you’re never invested in any of it. The talented Tcheky Karyo is no stranger to poor scripts, but he’s well above this. All he gets to do for most of the film is chomp on his cigar and glower hammily. Eventually, his role becomes just as messed up as everyone else here, and one gets the feeling that if this were remade in English, the role would be given to Gary Oldman or Nic Cage. So it could certainly get a whole lot worse.

 

An obnoxious, overdone piece of crap, and boring as hell to boot. If you want to see a cool heist/cops vs. robbers film, re-watch “Heat” or “Point Break”. This is the cinematic equivalent of getting root canal surgery whilst staring into ghastly strobe lighting and the only sounds are the culturally confused strains of Rednexx’s ‘Cotton-Eye Joe’. What a mess. 

 

Rating: F