On Blu Ray and DVD from Mon 26 June 2017

Doberman Cop is a Japanese action movie based on a 1970’s manga comic book by Yoshiyuki Okamura (aka Buronson). He is famous for creating the fantasy martial arts series Fist of The North Star, but with Doberman Cop,  Buronson took a hard boiled and gritty approach to action and fighting. The success of the manga series made it the perfect candidate to transfer to the big screen, with popular action star Shin’ichi (Sonny) Chiba in the lead role.

The movie begins as we see Joji Kano (Chiba) transfixed by the bright lights of Tokyo. He is a small town cop who has travelled to the big city to track down a missing girl called Miki (Janet Hatta). He is an outsider and has a different approach to policing when compared to the Tokyo cops and this predictably gets him into trouble. Kano likes to think on his feet and uses his strength as well as his intellect. His fish out of water character is also expressed by his straw hat and the pig that he is carrying. The pig is seemingly present to offer some comedic relief in contrast to the darkness of the story, but it does little to raise any laughs.

When the action and fight scenes kick into gear they look shoddy and out of focus. The camera feels one step behind the action and the movie is disorientating at times. Doberman Cop was shot in approximately two weeks with a very low budget and this could be the reason behind the inferior camera work and slapdash editing. This is disappointing as Fukasaku’s other Yakuza movies (such as Battles Without Honor and Humanity and Graveyard of Honor) are renowned for their depiction of action and drama. The movie is actually at its strongest when attention is given to the plight of the missing girl and the dark Yakuza gangland she has found herself in. We look on as Miki tries to make her way in the music industry, but finds herself in a dark and seedy underworld inhabited by crooks and gangsters.

Doberman Cop is worth a watch if you are interested in obscure Yakuza movies, or Manga to screen adaptations. Beyond this there is little to take away from the movie and it is by no means a classic from Kinji Fukasaku.