Dobermann (1997) 25th Anniversary Re-Release (Review)

The 90s was a wild decade. Outside of the mainstream, pop culture was going through an era where more meant more, an MO at its most frenzied with 1997’s Dobermann, directed by Jan Kounen and written by Joël Houssin. Both at the time and now, many equated this to the wave of movies heavily inspired by Quentin Tarantino. I like Tarantino on his day, but nothing he has ever produced was anywhere near as manic as this post-La Haine Vincent Cassel vehicle. Personally, I describe titles like this as cocaine cinema. Effectively a shorthand for cinema that plays out with the same manic energy a person would have if they ingested their own weight in the white powder.

If Dobermann resembles any filmmaker from the 1990s, it would be Ringo Lam – specifically his 1992 movie, Full Contact. There Chow Yun-Fat was a distillation of every Arnold Schwarzenegger role; Simon Yam was a gay juggler who wears flamboyant shirts and shoots someone out of his finger at one point. Bonnie Fu is a virgin who spends the entirety either masturbating or trying to sleep with everyone. Frankie Chin is a meat-head who takes the idea of guns as substitutes for phalluses to its zenith. And Anthony Wong starts as a coward, becomes a psychopath then comes back down to an even keel in the second half. Like I said: Cocaine Cinema. And one bit of trivia, too – Full Contact pioneered bullet-time long before the Matrix did in ’99.

He’s called Dobermann as he gets his first gun when he’s a baby after it is thrown into his pram in an accident at this baptism. The next scene sees him in a police chase with a mute Monica Bellucci, which Cassell stops when he fires a grenade out of his shotgun, blowing up the armoured vehicle and throwing a pursuing police officer out of the front window. Other gang members include a man who forever chews, has an endless sex drive and shoots a tennis ball with a phallic gun after losing at tennis. There’s also a naive man-child with his pet dog, Godzilla; he gives an elderly woman a handful of banknotes to stop her from getting hurt. An older gang member watches his friends have sex, poses as a priest and turns up to the bank robbery wearing a luchador mask. Another masturbates openly in front of nightclub dancers because he can’t get any, and, there’s a cross-dressing male prostitute who claims to his family that he is training to be a lawyer. I haven’t begun to touch upon the plot and narrative yet. Meaning a word to the warning – Dobermann is overwhelming for the unprepared. Instead of thinking of a French action movie, it is better to think of Hong Kong’s Cat III.

The plot is a simple one. Dobermann is a notorious bank robber that no police officer stands a chance against. No police officer other than Tchéky Karyo, that is. After a failed attempt to bring down the gang following a bank job, Karyo steps in, and we follow his attempt to arrest the gang or kill them, whichever is easier. Everyone is reprehensible, but no one more so than his police Commissaire. He laughs at domestic abuse on the streets and rocks up to the house of one of the gang members, tortures everyone, ties them up and kidnaps the baby – forcing him to betray their friends. Policeman, remember.

French New Wave famously inspired the Japanese New Wave back in the 1960s, but rarely has that level of influence travelled the other way – Dobermann being a rare exception. This is the very definition of a cult movie, a raw experience driven by a 1990s hard house pill-popping aesthetic. It’s miraculous that Vincent Cassell has enjoyed such a successful career as bold swings like this have ended many careers. For those who get it, the excess is the point – much like it was for Crank and Hardcore Henry – for those not on board, it’ll be hard to get past the fact that every character is reprehensible. Upon reading this, you should know which side of the fence you fall on – whatever side, you cannot dispute that this Dobermann is a wild, singular achievement.

Rob on Dobermann (1997)