Tal der Wölfe - Irak

After being the top TV series of Turkey for many years, Kurtlar Vadisi (Valley of the Wolves) now appears as a cinema film. Year 1996 was a break stone in Turkish cinema history, in which Eskiya (The Bandit) was seen by more than one million people, which could be counted a very high number for that time. People started to revise their opinions about the national cinema. After Eskiya, high-budget movies followed, being seen by millions of people, and giving out the signs that Turkey was in fact a really profitable country for film-making, if the needs of the people were analyzed well. The result of the analysis is simple: People would pay for the movies if they knew the cast from television. Good or bad, every movie having its basis on TV worked well on the screen. Kurtlar Vadisi Irak will do good on the screen, without any doubt, for the same reason. However, there is a difference now. The movie is based on the characters from the series, but the story is completely different. It zooms in the war in Iraq, with a different subjectivity than the American one. The makers of the movie could base the story on the mafia events that the viewers of the TV series were used to, but they took a risk and carried the war to the screen. Billy Zane appears in the movie, which will take the attention of international viewers. Time will show, if the movie is going to be a success out of Turkey, but we can say, it has simply guaranteed the top in Turkey.

I loved the TV series and I liked this movie. It is provocative and very real also. We finally see the real side of the U.S. and their twisted politics. I love seeing Americans lose. I love Polat Alemdar and 24/7 serious face. I think I will watch the TV series after this movie. 7/10

The making itself is not that great as most viewers have said. However, the action is entertaining enough. But I think what is more important is the subject of the movie. I'm glad that someone is finally has the gut to make a movie on the real injustice that committed by the America. It's amazing how many narrow minded people actually refuse to accept the truth about US army in Iraq. The massacre of civilian by US solder has already been reported by Time magazine and now the US defend department finally bowed to public pressure to investigate. Here's a report by US newspaper so no more arguments about the fact behind this movie. www.registerguard.com /news /2006 /05 /20 /a3.nat.iraqprobe.0520.p1.php?section=nation_world. (you need to remove the spaces in between to form a valid url)

I just hope we have a real hero like in the movie as well.

It's actually surprisingly slick for a Turkish movie, considering it's also part of an ongoing TV series, kinda like their "24".

The Good:

The actors all did well, and I'm surprised to see so many real American actors, including Busey and Zane in such a blatantly anti-war movie. The music The cinematography The editing The special effects

The Bad:

The production design is cheap by movie standards. The US military uniforms are not very believable and many of the US soldiers speak with thick accents (especially the jailer at Abu Ghraib). The plot is not believable, with the four Turkish special forces guys taking out a LOT of American G.I.'s at the climax. The US soldiers are shown to be cartoonishly evil - one guy even kills one of his own men for threatening to tell on him for killing some Iraqi civilians! Gary Busey as a Jewish Doctor harvesting organs to send to the West - a bit far fetched.

As ludicrous as it gets, this movie is a real eye-opener to how the Islamic world sees us. The war is controversial and polarizing here, just like this movie and most Americans are gonna love it or hate it long before they actually watch it. I liked it. One almost never sees an American (non-documentary) movie with the guts to be so completely one-sided, especially when our questionable foreign policy is involved. US soldiers as the bad guys, led by a fanatical Christian zealot, is definitely not something one sees every day. This movie is kinda like THE OMEGA CODE 2 turned on its head. Between the bad and the good, VALLEY OF THE WOLVES: IRAQ at least never fails to be entertaining.

Most German newspapers (e.g. www.spiegel.de) said the film is anti-American, anti-Jewish, anti-Christian, and is bad because it deepens the existing "culture clash" even more.

I don't agree. Well, of course the movie is one-sided. With a single exception the Americans in the movie are unscrupulous, dead-heartened and bloodthirsty. They humiliate people of other countries/cultures/religion, don't care about deaths of innocent civilians, maltreat prisoners, etc. Of course most Americans are not like this, but as we know from the pictures and videos from Abu Ghureib and from several other incidents, most of these things did really happen. Why should it be not allowed to show these things in a movie? One scene remind me strongly of holocaust movies: captives are transported on a long journey in a container on a truck. One guard says to the other: they might suffocate in the container because there is no fresh air supply. The truck stops, the (American) guard gets off the truck and fires with an automatic gun hundreds of bullet-holes into the container and creates a bloodbath among the captives. Well, if a holocaust movie shows German Nazis committing terrible things, I don't object too. OK, I don't really know if something like this container incident did really happen in Iraq, but we know that many bad enough things did actually happen.

There are interesting scenes e.g. where a sheik stops some fanatists from executing an American journalist and confronts them with facts why this has nothing to do with Islam, or another one where he discusses with suicide bombers why their plans are wrong.

This movie can help us understand how many Turkish, Arabic or Muslim people feel and think. It is provocative, one-sided, and mixes historic truth with fiction in a questionable way. However isn't that a good starting point for discussing these issues? Sometimes provocation is necessary to get people start talking. First we need to learn to talk about our own feelings. Then we can talk to each other. It's not very healthy if the political correctness keeps telling us to not talk about what we really think and feel just because it could violate other peoples feelings.