Dobermann (1997)

ok, i'll make it short. extreme violence doesn't make a good movie, which in my opinion a lot of people think. just add lots of violence here, lots of unimaginably stupid and not funny jokes there and, voila, a "cult" movie. i wonder where we are heading if this is what many people think of this movie, like it seems. this flick lacks intelligence, humour and everything else almost every other movie has. as someone else wrote correctly, everybody could have made such an uninspired piece of crap. don't get me wrong, violence can be good and necessary as a part of a movie, as long as it serves a deeper purpose, not only for style. there are lots of better french movies out there, eg. "i stand alone". destroy every copy of this "cult" when you come along one. thanks.

Fmovies: I didn't find much about this movie I like. This is clearly style over substance. It draws it's inspiration from "Natural Born Killers" and "From Dusk till Dawn" much too clearly. The violent couple, the showdown in a hellish club, the over-the-top violence of course, the characters (gung-ho priest included? Check! The cop who's worse than Satan himself? Check!),... It wouldn't annoy me that much, if it weren't done so half-heartedly. The characters are so 1 dimensional it's not even funny anymore. I just couldn't give a damn about ANY of the characters on screen. Most notably: Inspector Christini, the "bad-ass cop". His behavior by the end of the movie is totally out of line and completely unbelievable. The acting is plain awful. It's meant to be cool, but ended up to be just silly and stupid. In one particularly cringe-worthy scene, one of the baddies watches some TV with scenes of a lion killing a zebra - horrendous overacting ensues. Dialogue? Umm... Let's just leave it at that, OK? To sum it up: Dobermann is pretty much a fashion victim of 90s film-making. It contains all the stereotype characters and clichés you'd expect from that era of film-making without adding anything original. And the worst part of it? It's absolutely predictable and therefore boring as heck. 2 eye-candy points for Monica Bellucci, 1 point for a very nasty fart joke, 1 point for effort and 1 because I would have loved it, if I was still 13.

A nonsensical movie in the guise of crime drama satire/farce. It's all done without an inch of originality or creativity, merely an inability to write a decent screenplay and a director less concern with making a movie than he is about shooting a 90 minute music video. Dobermann's supposed "charisma" is laughable, unless you count wearing black clothes and shades "charismatic" -- I guess the French does. The rest of the world don't. Obviously the filmmakers were going for a "Natural Born Killers" vibe, but there's just simply no social commentary in this movie, just mindless spam violence for the sake of spam violence.

Dobermann fmovies. Don't misunderstand me. Dobermann has excellent cinematography and camera work. The special effects are great. But I want to comment on the sheer awfulness of the script, the plot and the characters. I watched this film with about ten people and we were all laughing at it. Its so incredibly naive and it beggars belief how anybody can watch this and not find the script absolutely appalling. For a while I thought it might be irony and taking the mickey out of itself. - But it CAN'T be. You would have to be an absolute genius to create such irony.

The characters all have idiosyncracies and enigmatic lines which are obviously supposed to contribute towards their depth and character development. But they just look childlishly ridiculous - we were laughing with incredulity that any film company could release such poor film-making.

If you like lots of guns and violence then fair enough; and at least seeing this movie will make you laugh. But I certainly wouldn't waste money buying it.

Dobermann shows how french can produce trashy films. They wanted to do a different action movie and they got it, but being different does not mean being good in fact when someone tries so badly to do different things, as anyone can notice in this film, the results are poor.

What makes a movie good or a cult? It is hard to say, but it is certain that Dobermann does not have anything of what is needed. A good movie, or a cult one, is not based in the appearances, it must have some substance and Dobermann does not have anything beyond the never ending gun fights, the shallow characters and dull dialogues.

But watching that movie is not a total waste of time, you can learn what not must be done in movies and Dobermann has many examples about that.

Having seen Vincent Cassel's previous films (Brotherhood of the Wolf, Irreversible, La Haine), i wasn't sure what i'd expect from this. Low and behold His performance as Yann was great. A great story with nice action blended in. Jan Kounen had great direction with this film. I admire his work now after watching this. Hopefully Blueberry will come here in the states soon, as i am waiting anxiously for it. But back to Dobermann. The opening church scene was a good way to establish Yann's roots as an anti-hero . From the bank heist to the Jo Hell Club gunfight, the intensity of the movie never dropped. Akin to Tarantino-style films, its no wonder i enjoyed it. Kudos to the Kounen/Cassel partnership as it yields great results.