Çiçero

It is a very compelling story of a historical person who played an important role in Ankara during second war. The casting of Erdal Besikcioglu and Burcu Biricik deserves 8/10 rating. Co-acting cast is definitely at 5/10 rating. The movie sounds as if it had a bug during the sound mixage. There is an echo during dialogues and we even asked Movie Theater if the problem is with their sound system. They rechecked and confirmed that it is the original playback. Also some shooting places are not so realistic and it feels like it is shot in a studio environment.

The script is a Hollywood-style rewriting of the history, quite different from the real history (see: Saving Private Ryan). It is more "inspired" by the life of Ilyas Bazna. A love story was added for dramatic effect and Cicero was turned into a less greedy person.

In terms of viewing pleasure, if you can get through the first half hour, the movie starts to get interesting.

In terms of acting: Erdal Besikçioglu and Burcu Biricik's acting was good.

Other than that dubbing feels terrible. I couldn't understand why English and German people speaks Turkish anyway. It would be better if they prefer them to speak their original language with Turkish subtitles.

My overall score is 7/10. Not a masterpiece but not a bad movie either.

At least this film tries to keep the audience guessing...maybe. Deeply emotionally in war scenes. This film is tricky because the lead actor (a spy) is actually trying to keep a country out of WW II. This comes through only after the fact of the action...kind of unique to say the least. The back story romance is kind of the usual in a war movie, so nothing unique there. Overall the story was interesting, even if unorthodox in the telling. This movie fills the void of history how the Ottoman empire remained neutral during WWII. Apparently history did not repeat itself because of one man's efforts to keep Turkey neutral, or so the story goes.

A very brilliant story has been wasted by the director. The story of spy Elyasa Banza is an excellent opportunity to create a realmaster. However, in Çiçero, acting performance are under-level, the scenario has lots of faults and thus, fails to create needed tension, everyone speaks Turkish but foreigner characaters very randomly starts to speaks their mother language by inadequate pronunciation etc... Therefore, Çiçero not only wasted a beneficial material but also failed to manage the level of an overall popular movie.

If you say, "hey what was happening in Turkey during WW2", then this is the right movie. For while not being directly involved, Turkey was really one of the major fronts of the war in a diplomatic struggle by keeping its naturality and also its existence. Çiçero successfully makes us feel the tension in Ankara under the dark clouds of WW2. While introducing us to a really compelling story, interesting and dimentioned characters it also presents us historical perspectice and humain values. I congradulate the director and the composer for the scenes, the acts and the soundtract. Inspired by a true story still its not a documentary and it has historical errors, though its important that it is a movie if these times. I wish movies were more sticked to the facts but I believe its just not the right time, at least not yet...