Disappointing Cheesiness and Shallowness

Rating: 4/10 (27 July 2017)

I was really looking forward to this movie. At last, a Hollywood flick about the Ottoman region during the Great War, a theme very close to my heart because my roots are Turkish. The reviews also looked quite promising, and the high IMDb score gave me extra motivation to spend my evening with this movie. And although the costumes, the Ottoman people, the setting and a lot of scenes (e.g. Istanbul panorama) are quite beautifully and accurately portrayed (even though Van doesn't look like Kapadokya at all, where a lot of scenes seem to have been shot), I really felt more and more disappointed as the movie was continuing. The typical Hollywood romance that you always have to endure when watching these historical movies, was way too cheesy to be bearable this time, partly due to the mediocre lead acting (Ben Kingsley's performance was the only convincing one as far as I'm concerned). The story was also very oversimplified, and seemed to lose more and more of its credibility near the end, especially when the Armenian theme was brought into it (not because of my own political convictions, I don't take a stand in this matter because I wasn't there, but because of the shallowness and the lack of nuance in the way it was portrayed). I really had high expectations for this one, and in a way I am happy that they made this movie, but I believe they could have, and should have delivered a less cheesy, and more elaborate product with that kind of budget. What a pity.