DOBERMANN
DVD region 0. Second Sight.

At the end of the 1990s, Dobermann was the flavour of the week amongst arsehole hipsters, who saw its amoral stance, stylised violence, drug culture and painful self-consciousness as something edgy – like a French mix of Pulp Fiction-era Tarantino and Trainspotting. And yes, it pretty much is that ghastly… but unlike those films, this movie doesn’t seem to have maintained its rep amongst annoying cunts. Perhaps this new release will change that.

With Vincent Cassel and Monica Bellucci as a pair of immediately annoying gangsters who lead a gang of wankers, the film is mainly set around a couple of set-pieces – a violent bank heist and the police attack on the worst nightclub in the world as retribution, led by psycho cop Tcheky Karyo. There’s a lot of gun fire, sex, drugs and awful dance music, with Dobermann (Cassel) being predictably posited as some sort of heroic figure.

This is the sort of film that dumb critics will call ‘effortlessly cool’, but in fact, it’s exactly the opposite – every second of this film seems to have been painfully laboured over by director Jan Kounen to make it seem ultra hip – the editing, the camerawork, the one-dimensional and clichéd characters. Unfortunately, time hasn’t been kind to Dobermann – in the decade and a half since it first emerged, every throwaway action movie has used the same sub-Tarantino gimmicks. What might have once dazzled the simple-minded can now be seen in any Jason Statham film.

Many of you may well still find this interesting – it moves at a decent pace, has plenty of excess and if you enjoy style over substance, there is plenty here to keep you amused. Personally though, I hated it.

DAVID FLINT

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