TATTOO (2002)

If you get a serious kick out of dark gritty horror thrillers in the vein of ‘Se7en’ and ‘Silence of the Lambs’ then you will definitely want to add 'Tattoo' to your list of must see movies. This German spawned mix of grisly murders and shadowy secrets will stay with you long after you have shifted your focus and has the same sense of possible reality that makes you feel uneasy in the real world.
Tattoo opens it’s tale with a true jolt via a very effective and high impacting scene which shows a naked woman stumbling down the centre of the highway sporting a terrible wound that dribbles blood down her whole body. The skin has been flailed from her back, which, on the face of it, is the least of her worries as a bus slams into her and explodes. Placed on the case of this mysterious death is Chief Inspector Minks, a hard-bitten cop whose personal life is as tragic as some of the cases he finds himself on. Minks decides that some fresh blood could be useful on this strange case and employee’s Office Schrader onto his homicide team. After finding a severed finger in the mouth of the dead woman along with her self modified forked tongue, they start to stalk within the dark underworld to find answers which will eventually lead to more deaths and a sick trade in human, decorated flesh.

The tone of the movie is fabulously unsettling at times and has a stillness that complements it’s twisted plot line which is heightened even further by the grimy urban setting that houses or characters world. The cast, as you would expect for a German production, are relatively unknown outside of the motherland but they have been picked to perfection. With mostly TV roles under their belts, Christian Redl and Nadeshda Brennicke emit little emotion via their characters yet offer the required amount of body language to display the subtle tones of inner torture their characters have experienced. August Diehl’s character has the opportunity to display a little more personality as the fresh rookie who’s stomach still churns at the sight of dead bodies and who’s interaction with both Minks and his girl friend allow for a more rounded display.
A lot of the subtitled films I have seen previously originate from Japan and they do tend to have a slower dialogue pace meaning that you can capture and visually digest a great deal of the scene before it moves on. With Tattoo I found that I was scrabbling to read the sometimes speedy text and was missing some of the films richness that accompanies the moody atmospheric settings. Why this might appear overly critical, it is in fact a compliment to the superb cinematography which needs to be lavished over to be fully appreciated.

As is evident from watching the UK exclusive DVD interview with Tattoo’s Writer, Director Robert Schwentke, his intelligent and enthusiastic view of genre films has transferred into his work to bring a truly absorbing and often disturbing experience that will have anybody with tattooed skin looking over their shoulders for a good while after.

Score

8 / 10