Sinav - Die Gangsterprüfung

This is good, light-hearted quasi-thriller (?) that succeeds without really trying to, or may be succeeds because it does not try too hard. Director Sorak seems to get the right lessons from the mistakes in G.O.R.A., or may be he fares better since 'Sinav' (The Exam) is his own project. Editing is better, seamless and fascinating. Turkish directors in general, Sorak included, are getting better and better at controlling the tempo lately.

The movie is about a small circle of friends, all high-school students under the stress of the approaching annual nationwide university entrance exam. They decide to ease their way by stealing the questions of the exam at all costs, even if they had pay thousands of bucks to hire a double-o-seven type.

The mixture of experienced and young actors do a good job with believable performances, they look and act real, even when things seem to go absurd for a while. It even has Jean-Claude Van Damme in a small but important cameo role to garnish. Any high kicks? well, one... kinda.

Turkish cinema produces about 25-30 movies a year - This one is one of the several that are actually worth watching.

A very good movie which contains a lot of life lessons and important messages. It was directed also in unusual way which i liked. Highly recommended. Cast was good, it describes the status quo of the system. Even though this movie is 19 years old, we still can observe similar trends and structure in current framework. Educational system unfortunately still serves to interests of few people and testing students create huge amounts of stress and chaos in their lives. Life is tough, not easy. This movie depicts all these messages and acting was also on spot. I wish this movie to be shown on TVs but I suppose certain stakeholders on top do not like smart movies to be shown on televisions.

We have watched Sinav with young people in Khalkedon. Sinav gives a priority to young people's problems. One of the most important problems is education and Grand University Exam. The question asked in the film that is possible to measure the performance with one exam? As a main basis horse race was given in the movie.

Ruya Onal is excellent; we can see her movies in soon. Jean-Claude Van Damme was not suit in his role. If he would played, we should have seen much more action scenes. Other players were average. Some characters, some typical pronunciation sticks to the player. We see Kadir Copdemir with same sort of character.

The director tried to bring velocity to the movie by accelerating scenes. However for the velocity we need much more peculiarities.

The movie is not bad on the whole; at least it gives us valuable clues about life itself.

I read some topics of this film's board,some turk is praising g.o.r.a,and some other people declare they don't even know what is going on,why i am comparing this movie to gora,because of same directors,and gora was utterly crap..

anyway this movie is absolutely local,if you are not familiar with Turkish University Entrance Exam,probably there wont any empathy with feelings of characters,because in other countries the exam isn't same as ours..

The movie brings us the feeling of wrong idea of this exam,and it also adds everyone has thought to make difference,but in the end you wont,only hard-workers will win in the end,so criticism of exam and showing the results of working is too balanced so,we can agree it both ways..

Acting:Not the greatest there are some typecasting characters such as Big-Bad-Headmaster,Slutty music teacher,horny tea seller,punk-girl who was before a actual girl etc..But we can feel what students fell really,because of i was in that exam last year,i know that pressure and you feel it too..

Scenes:Some kinda video clip style,which is absolute problem of director,and because of shooting you always feel like its Requem For A Dream,and it also gives you pressure too..

Scenario:Good..The tie-in's are great,the evolution of characters are good,first the dream sequence which gives us emotions of characters to frp style evolution of their work style;first stealing math exam,second stealing their pre-test exams,then the final one..

Jean Claude Van-Damme:We see him talking french and being himself and B type movie style kick and steal sequences,what can we ask for more for this film? Chuck Norris? Our country isn't concerned with his facts,by the way he is much more popular in here,and the poster of film actually have him..(although he made it 10 minutes max.) So,if you are some kinda evolved with University Entrance Exam,you definitely enjoy this film,but you are from another country maybe enjoy the feelings of students and-thankful for yours- because there is no empathy for you..

I had seen scenes from this movie from the clip of Nil Karaibrahimgil's song, I was curious. There was also veteran action actor JCVD. As a movie, it's an average movie, but what it wanted to tell was good.