Sunday, May 6, 2012

Cemil (A movie brought to you by the cigarette manufacturers of Turkey)

I have never seen so much smoking in one movie in my life. Even having seen a good number of Turkish films where smoking seems to be a way of life this film takes the case, or the smoke. Geeze, find a dead body have a smoke. Look at a corpse have a smoke. Almost get beaten up by a man with chains on his hands, bum a smoke from the poor guy. I think I may have gotten lung cancer just from watching this thing.

All kidding aside this is a very good action film starring Cüneyt Arkin, one of my favorite actors. Arkin is a doctor who moonlighted as an actor. Think of him as a cross between Clint Eastwood and Chuck Norris, and probably able to beat the crap out of both of them.

The plot of this film has Arkin investigating the death of the daughter of a friend of his.(I think this is the case since I saw this in Turkish without any English). The girl had some how gotten involved in prostitution and porn and was killed for her trouble. Arkin runs roughshod over the bad guys, kicking a few butts in the process of trying to track down which slime-ball was responsible. Arkin also has to deal with his friend who insists on getting involved as a result of a personal vendetta.

The action is well done (though it gets very silly at the end) and the plot is interesting. As Arkin films go its not at the top of the heap but its close. I'm sure that had I been able to understand the dialog I would have enjoyed it more.

If you're new to the films of Turkey and of the work of Cüneyt Arkin and feel adventurous you may want to give it a try with the understanding that this is middle of the road Arkin. if you've run across Arkin and his brand of action before and liked what you saw give it a try, this is basically more of the same. If you're not up to trying something new take a pass and wait for one of the other better Arkin films to come your way.

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