It's a start

Rating: 4/10 (18 February 2012)

Its $17,000,000 budget set a record in the history of Turkish cinema, and that money has gone into a scenario (Ottoman Empire) which was pretty much an untouched subject in Turkish cinema until today. I sincerely respect and congratulate Faruk Aksoy for undertaking such an important task.
But there are problems, big ones. Although $17M is a record-setting budget, it is just too small for a movie of this scale. They tried to do too much with too little and the result is inevitably a mediocre movie at best (and i say that with a bias). Nearly in every scene they tried to use digital sets, set extensions and digital environments which they failed miserably. After a while you get used to seeing green and/or blue outlines in every character and ignore the obviously computer-generated environment. Although some scenes looked okay (they did a good job with crowd animations, i'll give them that), visually this movie just doesn't cut it.
Scenario-wise it could be enjoyable if you can skip the love story and cut the screening time about 45mins. The horrible, horrible acting did not help either. Other than Devrim Evin (Sultan Mehmed II) and Recep Aktug (Constantine XI) who gave mediocre performances, most actors in the movie were amateurs.
All that being said, The Ottoman Empire deserves to be made into movies and hopefully good ones from now on. So i really hope Faruk Aksoy will make at least some money out of this movie, not because the movie itself deserves it but the path he opened could stay open.