Jan Kounen
Halfway between a videogame and a roller-coaster, this adrenaline french action/noir movie holds you breathlessly from beginning to the end. The crime beat seen from a close up outlook of bad and good which are not properly good then. A great performance of the anti-hero Dobermann (Vincent Cassell) and his ultra-loyal deaf-mute gypsy squeeze, Nat la Gitane (Monica Bellucci). Based on the Houssin's western comic novel is set in a contemporary Paris.
Dobermann's misfit gang includes a couple of gypsy thugs, a priest (Dominique Bettenfeld) with grenade-in-bible , Mosquito ( Antoine Basler) a crazy wrathful, Pitbull (Chick Ortega) a extremely violent giant. The gang is so chased by a psycho violent cop (Tchèky Karyo) tendencially the psycho worste one among them.
Jan Kounen directs one of that movies that could easly be called: whorehouse-film. An heist one about losing control where professional bank robbers turns themselves into nervous tennis players with a gun stuck in the underpants. Psychopaths serial killers with an IQ inversely proportional to their rate of propensity to crime. The violence is raw and both the cops and thieves are psychos. Starting of with a slow scene at the Dobermann's 'baptism of fire' it's possibile to recognize the influence of Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Tarantino and John Woo Asian action styled cinema as well as french action movie it then takes you on an action- trip.
An invasive post modern schizophrenia pervades the whole plot: trash-talks as the only means of comunication. Sex seen as a photocopy of hard-core snapshots. Violence as the only emotional landscape possible that infects and involves where the hunt of man is the only instinct.
Dobermann is a an unexpected movie you should definitely track down.
DOBERMANN
director JAN KOUNEN
year 1997
director of photography MICHEL AMATHIEU
cast VINCENT CASSEL, MONICA BELLUCCI, TCHEKY KARYO, ANTOINE BASLER, DOMINIQUE BETTENFELD and CHICK ORTEGA
words SILVIA GAIA MARCELLI
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