A young police recruit on the trail of a serial killer/s who cut the tattoo’s off of their unsuspecting victims, to sell them on the art collecting tattoo underworld. Not as ridiculous as it may sound. This film goes to some lengths to establish this dark fetishistic tribal underground. In this respect a successful film that attempts to reinvent genre film making for the German market place.
The young recruit is bribed to take his place under Chief copper Minks, a man who is driven by a very dark need. Without giving too much away, this film has a dark forboding permeating its construction and execution. It starts in a similar way to Arlington Road, with a women staggering through the deserted streets, slowly revealing that things are not quite right by the use of blurred focus and selective camera angles, borrowing heavily from its sound mix to reinforce its atmosphere. As things are not quite right, things get much worse and some terrible act of depravity has occurred. As with the classical genre work from Hollywood the opening scene is a measure of what is to come. Indeed the style of this film dominates its pretty basic Thriller theme. The director (Robert Schwentke) notes that “it is a horror film based on a thriller script”. This all boils down to meaning that it is style (atmosphere) above content (story). He also notes that he wanted the film to incorporate the expressionistic, rather than the naturalistic. Indeed the films camera work and sound both paint a dark world filled with only a touch of light. It is futher suggested that the narrative (sub-text) concerns the transference of guilt from one generation to the next and as this film is German, this may be worth paying mind to, especially for the American audience who maybe facing these kind of dilemmas in the coming years. Basic genre film making really, a story concerning one theme but the films narrative exploring the larger questions that face our evolution.
On one hand the film maker should be congratulated for his decision not to fill the world up with another empty film that will vanish from the mind as soon as the end credits roll. He is using the art form to explore the world in which he lives. Compared to certain Tartan releases this is a welcome relief. I am thinking of Maniacts and Red Siren, two recent films I had the displeasure of wasting three hours of my life sitting through. On the other hand the film is far from perfect. The initial establishment of the characters and the film world that the story takes place within seems to jarr. Exposition, or the verbal passing of information takes priority over the visual unfolding of the story. As in the classical genre films we are both told and shown each piece of vital information, just in case we missed the first cue. However as the film starts to unfold and the narrative takes precedence we have, in places, a shocking film that displays a world that does in fact exist. According to Schwentke he actually uncovered a market for the collecting of Tattoos. If they come off of the body before death is unclear but there is a market for the collecting of tattoos, as they are seen as Art in themselves. An opinion many of us share. However, their collecting goes beyond the classical 12th Century Mum and Dad type, so I guess thats why its not set in England.
The DVD comes with an extremely good 32 minuite interview with the director, that discusses the film, his intentions and an interesting trawl through his opinions on Genre films and specifically there place within modern day German cinema. He suggests that after WW2 the people of Germany had lost faith with conventional story telling, due to the control and twisting of that type of language during the rise of Hitler, when it was used for propaganda purposes (maybe England and America have this to come). So the German public and film makers reverted to a different kind of story telling(recalling Herzog, Wenders, Schlondorff etc), not based on classical story telling conventions and devices. Schwentke now believes it time to reintroduce the genre film to German audiences and this is his attempt to do so.
The picture quality is superb, the transfer seems to have captured the fantastic qualities of the cinematography and the sound design is very good. This comes in DD 2, DD 5.1 and DTS 5.1 surround. As the sound is expressionistic a lot of bass carries the atmosphere of the visuals and very rarely do we ever hit sound that we would recognise as natural. So this film is a good one for the muti speaker owners out there.
Also included is original trailer, tartan trailer reel and scene selection but I’m not sure the latter could be descibed as special features but it seems like Tartan is determined to market it as such.
All in all I don’t want to give too much of the story away, as it is one of them films where it is best to come to it a little blind. However it is not for the faint hearted and as it involves Tattoos and body pearcing and body modification, I think that certain people will already be looking forward to seeing this. Like the film depicts, Tribalism is making a mainstream return to the developed countries and word of mouth I’m sure will already be leaving a few tongues (that have alrady been split in two) salivating in anticipation at seeing this film. It is no masterpiece but it is definitely worth a viewing and I also think that we will be hearing about Robert Schwentke again in the near future, as he has tried to make a film with a depth to it, that is both competent in its structure and execution and as he speaks virtually perfect American, I think his transition to America will not be long in arriving.