Tasty morsels

TATTOO Directed by Robert Schwentke. Starring August Diehl, Christian Redl, Nadeshda Brennicke, Ilknur Bahadir, Jasmin Schwiers, Johan Leysen.Club cert, 108 min

Considering the publicity generated by the recent case of the Rotenburg cannibal, the German tourist board could be forgiven for not welcoming the release of Tattoo, which contains further, albeit fictional stories of that nation's citizens volunteering to have bits of their bodies torn off for the delectation of wealthy lunatics.

This agreeably disgusting if unoriginal thriller by Robert Schwentke, a début director, imagines an underground culture of tattoo collectors who will pay the willing and, should it be necessary, murder the unwilling for lumps of their decorated flesh.

Investigating the case is rookie officer Marc Schrader (August Diehl) and his superior Detective Minks (Christian Redl). Schrader is brash and irresponsible. Minks, whose daughter ran away after his wife died in a traffic accident, is bullet-headed and gruff.

As in Se7en, which Tattoo resembles to an uncomfortable degree, the action takes place in a murky brown world under consistently gloomy skies. Even the food is brown; at one stage Marc's girlfriend serves him a bowl of some gloopy material that looks (let's use the politest comparison) like dilute mud.

Thankfully, the inevitable rain holds off until the last half-hour, but when it finally arrives it lashes down with predictable fury.

Despite all those clichés, Tattoo is still reasonably watchable. This is partly down to the novelty of the Berlin locations, which suit this sort of dark material very nicely. It is partly the knotty plotting, which takes us in some unexpected directions, even if the villain's identity is obvious long before the denouement. And it is partly the restrained direction and unhurried editing.

But there is nothing here we haven't seen a dozen times before. Still, Tattoo has, it is rumoured, won Schwentke the chance to go to Hollywood to helm the next Jet Li project. So whatever we think of his film, the director has probably achieved his primary aim.

RATING: ***