Cicero

After the film, "what did I watch?" I asked myself. The film seems to have exaggerated. Erdal Besikcioglu played well, but the fiction is a bit overstated.

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.

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.

I broke 3 stars because the film isn't historically accurate.

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.