The Film: Yann (Dobermann) heads a rag tag bunch of thieves, a priest, a big drug sniffing dolt, a transvestite, a hyper wacky guy, a rich kid, and, ever present by his side, his deaf lady love, Nat the Gypsy. When asked why he works with such a motley, insane crew, he simply says, "They are the best." Hot on his trail is the psychotic and cruel Inspector Christini. With wacky weaponry and clothes off a Paris runway, as slick, hip, and odd as Dobermann's crew is, Inspector Christini is their cruel, stuffy, fascist opposite, willing to kill, torture, chew and spit out anyone who gets in his way. As the gang pulls off a few daring daytime robberies, Inspector Christini reaches a fever pitch in his madness to catch them, finally leading to a confrontation between the gang and the dogged cops under a hail of bullets in a techno club.

For every Pulp Fiction there is a 2 Days in the Valley. For every True Romance there is a Love and a 45. For every El Mariachi/Desperado there is a Dobermann (1997). High octane, cartoony, all style and little-no substance, the film equivalent of a glazed donut. The dialogue is an afterthought, the characters are carbon copied, a purposeful plot is non existent (which is why its rather hard to give a story synopsis). Dobermann is our antihero pursued by a psychotic cop- that is it. Introduce the characters, do the big heist, the big shoot-out, the finale, and throw in a few scenes (the burial of a dog, the bumbling cops, one gang member tortured into being a traitor) in-between to tie it together.

Director Jan Kounen is from the same school of Luc Besson, George Miller, Sam Raimi, Robert Rodriguez, Jean Pierre Juenet, Tsui Hark, Peter Jackson, and Guy Ritchie. Dobermann is all about style, flash, pizzaz, split screen, freeze frame, zooming, lurching camerawork, rapid editing, and a pulsing techno soundtrack. Unfortunately, it is also devoid of any emotional undercurrent. Films like La Femme Nikita, Braindead, or The Killer may be big on style and action, but each also has some identifiable heart to back up all the visual flourish. Here we get all the visuals, but nothing to back it up, no character development, and not even much witty dialogue. Big, bold, and loud, action for actions sake. It makes it kind of hard to route for Dobermann and his crew, because they pretty much are a group of thrill seeking, drug sniffing, louses. During the heist, they are pursued by a policeman on a motorcycle, they grab the guy off the cycle and into their car, shove grenade into his helmet, toss him out onto the street, and we watch him panic before exploding. I guess they are supposed to be cool, and the main cop is supposed to be evil, but, like in the scene I just described, the gang is never shown to have any compassion whatsoever, so I had a hard time enjoying any of their exploits. Not that I wanted them to be warm and fuzzy, I just need some development, even if it means making them worse beings, to enjoy following them. Now, I know there are many, many action fans, who could give a damn about what Dobermann lacks and would be pleasantly entertained by its pure visceral pleasures, I just like little more.

The film features a power trio of European stars. Known for his roles in such films as Elizabeth, Brotherhood of the Wolf, Crimson Rivers, and Hate, Vincent Cassel is Dobermann. From Bram Stoker's Dracula, Melena and, once again, Brotherhood of the Wolf, Monica Bellucci is Nat the Gypsy. And, finally adding another over the top bad guy role, Tcheky Karyo from Kiss the Dragon, The Patriot, The Bear, La Femme Nikita, and about a zillion other movies.

In the world of cinema, probably one of my favorite stories of the past five years, concerns what has happened in French cinema. France has always had the reputation of a pretentious society, and its film making helped cement this stigma. While other European countries embraced commercial, exploitative, pure entertainment genres, (the Italians probably the worst offender with everything from sword and sandals epics, Italian crime, and zombie movies, to name a few) the French barely strayed from dramatic or artistic very much except with their comedy; action films almost didn't exist. But, through filmmakers like Luc Besson and Christopher Gans, suddenly there was a surge of action films, aping Hong Kong and American styles, combined with a French sensibility (see Crimson Rivers). Well, despite this new wave of films making money, many French cinema purists began to actually protest these films. Can you imagine it in America, a line of art school kids and such, yelling and screaming, throwing eggs outside a theater because it is showing Mission Impossible or The Rock? Like it or not, France has now become a player in such genre films, Dobermann is a product of this sensibility and no doubt could've had its fair share of protesters for being a work of mindless trash. But, if you are a dirty American, who likes a piece of mindless trash, I'm sure Dobermann would be a pleasant diversion for an hour and a half.

The DVD: Region 0, very inexpensive Chinese DVD of a French film, from a company I'd never heard of before called Forel. Sound- Very nice, crisp Dolby Digital 5.1 stereo, original French audio, as well as a Chinese audio track. Optional English and Chinese (simplified and traditional ) subs, that suffer a bit in translation. Picture- A crying shame really, that such a visual film, is in letterbox during the credits, and then goes to fullscreen. I'll never understand why on Earth companies do this, tease us with gorgeous letterbox and then switch to pan and scan? But, aside from the travesty of fullscreen, the picture looks good, with the stark, music video cinematography represented well. Extras- No real extras to speak of other than a story synopsis, and 9 Chapter selections.