Die Katze

When Dominik Graf‘s thriller about a bank robbery and a meticulously planned
hostage-taking was released in cinemas at the beginning of 1988, it was
nothing less than a sensation. Such a precise, cool genre film with a star cast
had not been seen in West German cinema for a long time, perhaps never
before. And it has lost none of its appeal since then. Time seems to have done
as little to it as it has to the gangster films of Jean-Pierre Melville or the noirs
of Fritz Lang. Probek, a professional played by Götz George, who seems to
anticipate Robert De Niro‘s character in Michael Mann‘s ‘Heat’, has an almost
perfect plan. While two of his accomplices take hostages in a bank, he obser-
ves and directs the action from his hotel room. In this way, he is always one
step ahead of his opponent, Chief Inspector Voss. However, he is far from hol-
ding all the strings in his hands. Dominik Graf maintains the balance between
control and ecstasy in an almost magical way. Every shot, every cut follows
a grandiose economy. Nothing is too much here, everything fits together
perfectly. This is how ‘The Cat’ develops a truly intoxicating maelstrom.