It's hard to know just what one is supposed to make of DOBERMANN. An exercise in studied and self-conscious decadence might be the best way to describe it, because boy, does this film want to SHOCK! But, alas, each excess and the subsequent glorification of brutality becomes so boringly repetitive when you not only have psychotic crooks, but also a psychotic police force to combat them! Everyone is nuts, so what does the outcome of it all really matter?
Quirky eccentricity (so beloved of French movies) hits us at about 80 miles per hour and 40 years out of date, and the narrative, such as it is, stretches all credulity when the police actually take a baby along with them on a stakeout of a low-life dive!
Cool, cute, laid-back and slick, the criminal fraternity are shown as misunderstood but intensely `real' people just `doing their thing'; the sort of vicarious turn-on tailor-made to delight wet-liberals and self-styled intellectuals. Why, even when one of them defecates in the street, he searches around for paper, and lo!, there's a discarded copy of the ultra-posh `Cahiers du cinéma' in the gutter from which he can tear a page to use..!
And so it goes relentlessly on and on, with trendy little touches slipping in here and there, and everything coolly calculated to evoke a response of `Formidable!' from French teen audiences. Alas, it just doesn't cut the mustard despite all the super-human frenzy that appears to have gone into its making, and when the final credits roll, one is left with the empty feeling of `So what?'.
Quirky eccentricity (so beloved of French movies) hits us at about 80 miles per hour and 40 years out of date, and the narrative, such as it is, stretches all credulity when the police actually take a baby along with them on a stakeout of a low-life dive!
Cool, cute, laid-back and slick, the criminal fraternity are shown as misunderstood but intensely `real' people just `doing their thing'; the sort of vicarious turn-on tailor-made to delight wet-liberals and self-styled intellectuals. Why, even when one of them defecates in the street, he searches around for paper, and lo!, there's a discarded copy of the ultra-posh `Cahiers du cinéma' in the gutter from which he can tear a page to use..!
And so it goes relentlessly on and on, with trendy little touches slipping in here and there, and everything coolly calculated to evoke a response of `Formidable!' from French teen audiences. Alas, it just doesn't cut the mustard despite all the super-human frenzy that appears to have gone into its making, and when the final credits roll, one is left with the empty feeling of `So what?'.