Muro: Nalet Olsun Içimdeki Insan Sevgisine

"Kurtlar Vadisi" was a good show. "Kurtlar Vadisi - Pusu" is very bad. This character is also out of this series. Why did I watch a movie made for a character who got out of there when I wasn't watching the second series?

One-trick Turkish TV producer Raci Şaşmaz recruits younger brother Zübeyr Şaşmaz for this curiously ill-conceived supposedly-comedic spin-off from the burgeoning "Valley of the Wolves" media franchise created by Osman Sınav, which went great guns in its native market by becoming the third highest-grossing Turkish film of 2008.

Failed leftist revolutionaries Muro (Mustafa Üstündağ) and Çeto (Şefik Onatoğlu) are released from prison only to discover that during their incarceration a corrupt former friend has married them off to a couple of Russian prostitutes in the set-up to a series of supposedly comedic escapades.

Mustafa Üstündağ is painful to watch as the barely two-dimensional caricature of an overbearing leftist revolutionary whist fellow franchise veterans Şefik Onatoğlu and Eray Türk have little more to do than quake somewhat inexplicably in his far from impressive shadow as a trio of comic-relief characters completely unworthy of their own feature.

Selim Erdoğan at least looks like he's having fun, although he's alone in this, as the sleazy protagonist, whilst Russian imports Nataliya Bondarenko and Daria Litinova look suitably bored as the supposed love interests and Evrim Alasya just wastes her time by even trying to put in a finely nuanced and multifaceted performance.

The strengths of the franchise, which has always used current concerns torn from the daily headlines, are completely abandoned in favour of outdated cardboard caricatures of old-school leftist revolutionaries spouting crass cock-and-ball jokes that would have been rejected by their box-office rival Recep İvedik in a paper-thin conspiracy plot.

The over-eager and ever-manipulative film-makers seem to have rushed into this spin-off too far in pursuit of wringing a few more lira out of the mega-popular media franchise without ever actually stopping to think if these comic-relief caricatures are actually capable of carrying a feature on their own and have of course once again inexplicably succeeded.

"Damn my love for humans "