Had great potential but failed

Rating: 7/10 (26 February 2012)

This movie arguably has the best cinematic concept and special effects in Turkish cinema. Because Turkish cinema has no experience in historical or action movies, it would be wrong to expect a Hollywood quality production. Still it has better combat scenes than I expected.
While these properties can be overlooked, I am very disappointed how the movie turned out. I will be listing these in the order of importance:
1.The movie doesn't reflect or promote the Ottoman Empire and culture the way it should. If I watched this movie in another language I would have thought this is just another European kingdom. Only %10 percent of the movie has Ottoman Culture (praying, war camps, janissaries)
2.Music.. Seriously it couldn't be worse.. There are dozens of awesome Ottoman marches. "How come they are not included?" is not enough, "HOW DARE THEY NOT INCLUDE THESE MARCHES???"
3.The scenario is really bad. Scenario is what people look at this type of movies and the execution of the events is just facepalm level bad. Even though I know the whole story I had a hard time understanding, where we are, what time is it, who are these people, what are these people doing here? They payed to much attention to the cannon but no attention to the ships being pulled to Haliç, which was clearly the main reason the siege succeeded. They should have at least made a 1 minute scene where Mehmed was offering this brilliant idea. The movie is probably really confusing to people who have no knowledge about the history of this battle. This battle changed the era of world and we should have been given more info about why Istanbul is so important why Mehmed wants it so bad. In the movie it just seems like a purposeless childish desire.
4.Giovanni vs Hasan. The fighting scenes are great yeah but why do they look like twins? Why do they look like some random bandits wandering around the battlefield? They are the commanders and best warriors in the battlefield! Surely they should wear an armor and a uniform instead of running around in combat with bare arms like Hercules. Mehmed should have been the main hero in the story not Hasan..
5.The Mehmed we should see in the movie is around 17-22 age. However the actor Devrim Evin is 30 years old and looks 35! They should have picked a charismatic and younger actor. Btw he is the Sultan he should have the best outfit in the empire but even his viziers have better outfits.
6.Troops are not promoted properly. Janissaries? They are not shown as much as they should. And where are their guns? Hand-held rifles probably haven't been invented yet but I am pretty sure they had rifles that had to be set to ground before firing.
7.Where is Deliler(Crazy) Unit? They are known for being the first troops in battle and using Ottoman slapping technique that can knock out enemy knights and horses in armor, when the enemy sees Deliler in front lines they feel depressed cause those dudes kill people by only slapping! How can this awesome stuff not be included in a movie?
8.The leader of 2 sides just don't meet and chat in the middle of the battlefield before war starts. They will be assassinated at first sight.
Yeah they did the battle effects and action parts but they messed up all the other parts big time! How can you have a budget this size and fail this much? The stuff I listed aren't that hard to include in a movie. They just had to think of it instead of making useless action scenes. We aren't here to watch the 1v1 battle of heroes or awesome arrow shower etc.. We are here for the history, for the logic, for the heroic and brilliant moments which weren't even thought of by the producers..
I am sorry but 12 year old kids and illiterate people may find this movie great but in reality this actually had a great potential but is totally failed the great opportunity..
In my opinion the TV series about Sultan Suleyman, The Magnificent Century is better in all the aspects except action and special effects. Yeah it has some lame love scenes but the overall environment is simply better.