Over 90 percent of Tattoo are taken at night or indoors with dim lightning. This might be the reason why this one is often compared to David Fincher's Seven (which also has two officers investigating mysterious and bizarre serial killer). Fairly impressive cast of Tattoo cannot cache rather implausible & heavy constructed story. August Diehl has never looked so lost on the big screen as in the second half of Tattoo (probably he noticed what he was into it - and it was too late to get out). Dull and likely socially disturbed dialogs (with some "witty" humor about the skin, German "die Pelle") plus the unnatural lightning definitely kills the aesthetic effort of the filmmakers (which is merely noticeable). This movie is rated to high in my opinion, because there is no explicit cruelty in it (which is a plus!), its just mostly boredom.<br /><br />The plot tries to display a bizarre scene of Tattoo-fetishists (Tattoo collectors who kill people for their skin). The Tattoo art aspect comes short, they only chat about it, but the actual Tattoos used in this movie are not good (or not displayed good enough).<br /><br />Our hero (Diehl) goes through a strange metamorphosis from a innocent and unprofessional police-apprentice (which he masters very good) till he becomes a super-bad-cop like Charles Bronson (selfjustice, etc). Diehl looks here a lot out of place.<br /><br />This movie had a notable success (especially in the U.S.), seems like a proper mix of some hype elements: Tattoos, sex & body modification (marginal). But this movie has a significant lack in the story itself, which is not plausible at all. Other problems are weak director's performance (seems like Nadeshda Brennicke was casted only to take off the clothes) and somehow inappropriate editing (with no plausible reasoning). The good one about this movie are some supporting actors, which are brilliant (Ilknur Bahadir as the annoying cop and Monika Bleibtreu as police-boss-mom) and some interesting architecture shots. The rest is awful, great actors and expensive lihgtstyling are no guarantee for a good movie. Well, not in Germany.<br /><br />ps. Nivea-Creme is a very popular skin care product in Europe.