Dobermann follows the title character (Vincent Cassel) and his group of bank robbers as they evade the law and particularly a maniacal cop, Cristini (Tcheky Karyo). The tone of the movie is set right away with the opening sequence, at the end of which a gun is given to a baby at his Baptism. The rest of the story, based on cop novel, is fairly simple; bad guys versus good guys, or is it?
As the story develops, the “good” guys seem to be more and more like the “bad” guys. As the cop Cristini will stop at nothing to catch the Dobermann, violence escalates to higher and higher levels. And this where I will stop talking about the story, because the least said about the story, the better for those who have not seen it. The story, adapted for the screen by the writer of the original book Joel Houssin, is well written. Not being familiar with the novel, I sadly cannot compare the book to the movie. The dialog is very simple and laden with French swear words and general bad language. Depending on where your DVD of the movie came from, the sub-titles may or may not give all the bad language.
The direction is spot on for the type of movie it is and the action is quite good. The lead actors and actress are all well respected actors in Europe (now at the least) and they all give good to great performance. Nobody does maniacal and scheming quite like Tcheky Karyo (Nikita, Kiss of the Dragon, Crying Freeman…). Vincent Cassel does a fantastic job with his character of Dobermann and Monica Bellucci does as good as him as the beautiful Nat the Gipsy, a deaf bomber who loves to blow shit up.
The supporting cast does very good with each of their part, especially Romain Duris (Moliere, L’Auberge Espagnole, …) as Manu and Stephane Metzger (Girl on the Bridge, Michel Vaillant, … ) as Olivier/Sonia. Parts of the movie may seem to yell 1997, but they are easily forgivable as the whole is very much gun and filled with gleeful violence. This is not a masterpiece by all means, but it is so much og everything that you cannot not find anything to love about this movie, may it be only the beauty of Miss Bellucci. So, this movie is a must see for its sheet levels of craziness coupled with good acting and to see a young Cassel and Bellucci blow stuff and people up.