When you are given your first gun before you were even age 1 – and you took a liking to it immediately – can say a lot about your future career prospects. It will likely involve crime, violence, drugs and a great pair of sideburns. And your friends are likely to be lunatics. The cops as well, so at least it all evens out.
It starts with the young baby getting a gun and then, while staring down the barrel, cleverly transitions to an all-grown-up Dobermann, robbing an armoured cash car. Soon the film has introduced you to the rest of his colourful crew of gunslingers, as well as the police officers trying to capture them. Heading this charge is the film’s antagonist, a maverick cop with a slight personality disorder called psychopathy.
Dobermann rounds up his crew – a group with names like Mosquito, Pitbull and The Priest – and his sultry deaf girlfriend with a thing for big explosions. They rob a bank in dazzling if slightly incomprehensible style and the cops come off looking stupid. This starts a hunt for Dobermann, inevitably ending in a good serving of the old ultra-violence. Not that there is any shortage of explosions, firepower or flying bodies in the rest of the film.
A movie like Dobermann is often best served in a foreign language. In this case it’s French, complete with that nation’s cinematic habits of bizarre dialog and mandatory style. In other words, sometimes it doesn’t make sense, but Dobermann always looks good. There is some navalgazing, but generally the film grabs your collar and shakes hard. Dobermann falls into that same school as The Boondock Saints – it’s a world where slick gun sharks, comic book violence and transvestites rolling around on the ground mesh seamlessly.
Last Updated: July 15, 2013
RinceWind
July 15, 2013 at 14:10
Is this available already? I assume from certain websites it would be? Cough…
James Francis
July 15, 2013 at 15:04
What do you mean? Dobermann has been out since 1997…
RinceWind
July 15, 2013 at 15:05
I’ve never heard of it! *Hangs head in shame
James Francis
July 15, 2013 at 15:06
Hence the point of this column 🙂 Go get it!
RinceWind
July 15, 2013 at 15:09
Yes SIR!
That Dark Twit
July 15, 2013 at 15:16
On it.
That Dark Twit
July 15, 2013 at 14:31
Got to have great sideburns.
James Francis
July 15, 2013 at 15:06
A big gun, nice sunglasses and a decent chin doesn’t hurt either. Vincent Cassel would make an interesting Lobo…
Kervyn Cloete
July 15, 2013 at 15:08
Now that you mention it….