This plodding serial-killer procedural grafts hand-me-down malevolence onto a standard rookie-veteran police yarn, the results of which yield nary a fright, let alone a goose pimple.
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Slick, grisly and determinedly umbral, German cop thriller Tattoo is a largely effective "Se7en" wannabe that gradually develops its own character after an over-derivative start.
Maybe Tattoo is creepy and stylized enough to pull you along anyway, but if you like your thrillers to dig below the familiar epidermis, look elsewhere.
Indulging his taste for Grand Guignol and the stylistically baroque, Schwentke never quite overplays his hand, though his occasional lapses into visual extravagance can be irritating, and the result is a nasty, intelligent and complex thriller.
Los Angeles Times by Kevin Thomas
The film is an engrossing and original police procedural of bleak, steel-gray images and high style. But be warned: as part of its complex, ever-unfolding plot, it is punctuated with some grisly images.
Delivers an effective double-sting ending.
A blood- freezing German thriller, a very stylish variation on "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Seven."
TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh
Overall this is an assured piece of genre filmmaking that delivers the goods so stylishly it hardly matters that they aren't fresh.
The New York Times by Stephen Holden
A grim, disquieting mood piece.
The A.V. Club by Tasha Robinson
Unlike so many "Seven" followers, it makes its missteps memorably, and offers a variety of stylistic rewards by way of compensation.