"Valley of the Wolves – Iraq", Kurtlar Vadisi – Iraq (official website – Flash req.), is a recent Turkish action thriller.
The highest budgeted Turkish movie so far is a follow up to a successful TV series. The movie depicts the battle of a small team of Turkish special agents against malicious U.S. powers in northern Iraq.
The 2pm show today, in a 700 seats downtown theater, attracted only some 200 people. The evening shows are said to be packed.
About 10% of the visitors were German and 90% Turk/Kurd. A third were female, only some 10 with headscarves. Half of the people were first generation migrants, age 40-60, the other half from the younger generation. The flick was in Turkish language with German subtitles. It is rated age 16+.
In quality the movie can certainly compete with any decent Hollywood flick – great soundtrack, great actors, good camera runs and scenery and lots of flashy special effects. The plot, which I detail below, is dense. Though there is a lot of fighting and blood, the moral message is saddening and can be understood as a call for peace. Unfortunately, there is one part in the plot that degrades this message.
The movie starts out with 11 Turkish special forces being captured, hooded with sacks and interrogated by U.S. forces in North Iraq. Back in Turkey, the commander of that unit can not stand the shame. Before committing suicide, he asks his friend, the former Turkish secret service agent Polat Alemdar (Necati Sasmaz), to take revenge for the insult.
The man responsible for the incident is the OGA (other government agency, i.e. CIA) officer Sam Marshall (Billy Zane) who commands a gang of a dozen brutal mercenaries in black muscle shirts. A cultivated, knowledgeable, Beethoven loving man, Marshall’s neocon, ‘destroy for change’, and evangelical, ‘Jesus above everything’, believes give him a ruthless conviction to know best for all.
Polat and his two comrades prepare a trap by threatening to blow up a noble "Harilton" hotel in a northern Iraqi city. After removing guests and staff from the scene they order the hotel director to call and get Marshall: "Don´t you capitalists pay and control these forces?"
When Marshall arrives, Polat wants him to put a sack above his head and to publicly leave the hotel with it, taking the same insult he committed to Polat’s dead friend. But Marshall is prepared and his gang leads a choir of children into the hotel. Polat, not wanting to kill these, breaks off, but is now prepared to go for Marshall’s life.
Leila (a beautiful Bergüzar Korel), an orphan raised by a wise Sufi leader and Sheik (Ghassan Massoud), has her wedding party. Marshall’s gang prepares to raid the party to pick off some local leaders. When the usual celebratory gunfire starts, one says: "Now they are shooting, now they are terrorists."
The raid ends with Leila’s groom, some children and guests being killed and the surviving males being transported in an airtight container to Abu Graibh. When a regular U.S. lieutenant protests the suffocating container transport, the leading mercenary opens fire on the container to "get some air holes in there". Then he kills the protesting U.S. officer.
In Abu Graibh a Jewish doctor (Gary Busey), working with Marshall’s gang, is "harvesting" kidneys from the surviving prisoners. He hands out morphine when they suffer from post-operation pain. The kidneys are prepared to be send to London, New York and Tel Aviv. Another scene in Abu Graibh shows naked prisoners being stacked in a pyramid by a female GI. Other nakeds get hosed down with cold water.
Leila wants to take revenge for the wedding raid and asks her stepfather to allow her to commit a suicide bombing. In the longest scenes of the movie, the Sheik monologues to her in depth why Islam does not allow suicide bombings. Innocent people may get killed and suicide in itself is against Sharia. Leila follows that ruling, but sets out to personally kill Marshall.
Meanwhile Marshall is playing divide and conquer politics in a meeting with local Kurd, Turkman and Arab leaders. "The mountains for the Kurd, the desert for the Arabs and the oil for us". The Turkmen have to take flight from the city.
Both, Leila and Polat, try to use the occasion to kill Marshall, but an unrelated suicide bomber blows himself up next to the meeting and wounds and kills lots of innocent bystanders. Marshall escapes.
Leila helps Polat to flee the scene and with another attempt to go after Marshall. They believe to have succeeded, but when Polat brings Leila back to her stepfather’s mosque, Marshall is coming for them. His gang, with the support of regular GI’s, blow up the mosque with RPG fire. Polat’s group wins the ensuing firefight, but Leila is mortally wounded by Marshall.
In a man-on-man fight Polat finally, using Leila’s sacred dagger (a wedding gift), kills Marshall. After Leila dies in his arms, a saddened, lonely Polat saddles his horse and rides into the gleaming sundown (not so).
All the way Kurtlar Vadisi is a classic Western-like Hollywood B-movie plot. Good versus bad, an unfulfilled love relation, lots of action tipped off with of a moral tale.
As far as I can tell, the background of the movie is based on recent reality except one part. The kidney scene depicting a Jewish doctor is anti-semitic and somehow does not fit the plot at all. While there are a lot of Mossad agents plotting in Kurdistan and, in general, organ dealing is very real shady trade, I am not aware of any rumors or reports that would support the tale.
Throughout the movie the (Uncle-)Sam Marshall’s CIA gang are the bad guys. But at one point the Marshall character hits a real nerve with the Turks when he tells them how they, for 50 years, have depended on U.S. defense and support. The folks watching with me, were uncomfortable to look into that mirror.
For Americans the movie may look anti-American, but it is less so than any Rambo flick is anti-Russian or dozens of other Hollywood flicks are anti-(whatever the current U.S. enemy is). It is certainly less brutal and racist than any recent "24" plot.
Unlike the CIA gang, the regular U.S. military is shown as good and bad. The warning to GI’s not to watch the movie is completely unnecessary. There was no jubilance about the movie, no handclapping, but the people seamed satisfied. In after-movie talks I have not heard any bad word on Americans at all. People just did like the movie and nobody was outraged. Maybe because there was nothing new to get outraged about?
The movie will show in English language in some U.S. theaters (watch out for the protests!). I recommend to watch it if only for the interesting experience to experience the tools of Hollywood being used in a very unaccustomed "anti-American" way.
The unconscious bias we developed through decades of indoctrination by U.S. centric movie culture may well need a bit of readjustment.
Kurtlar Vadisi is good start to achieve such.
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Some other viewers reviews