Toss-Up

I have seen the movie this year. I've been watching the director as an actor for years. The story is very realistic and the cast seems to fit so appropriate. After a while except dramatic editions, the movie transforms to a documentary film and begins to annoy much more. The two parallel sub-stories holds many characters like the cheating friend of Ridvan, the survivor of 1999 earthquake, neglectful father of Cevher, the unwanted gay brother and also the ghostly Kurdish ex-girlfriend of Ridvan. Especially the finals of the two stories makes an ironic expression on the movie title heads or tails"Yazi& Tura".. Each side of the coin is the same.

The film actually has two separate stories, starting from the same scene. First story is about a small town guy who comes back from the military service as a wounded handicapped man. The next story is about his friend who comes back home in the big city after army service. Their before-military dreams are destroyed when they confront realities of life. I liked the first story better because it is very probable and realistic. However, the second story, is not as strong as the first, mainly because of telling a marginal story, (army guy turns into mafia guy, his daddy had a former marriage with a Greek woman, and their son is half Greek half Turkish gay man).. So second story mainly revolves around the psychological conflicts on how come a Turkish commando-mafia guy had a gay Greek half brother.. I wonder how many turks had this same conflict :) This is a typical trap of many Turkish movie makers usually fall.. They focus on a marginal story, and lives of marginal people, and they miss the huge majority of people, and their ordinary lives. The realism in the movie weakens when almost all characters are losers, alcohol and drug abusers. Movie also is loaded with too many things which reduces its believability: terrorist/military conflict, Turkish guy loving a terrorist conflict, painful earthquake, Greek Turkish relations, gay-macho conflicts, substance abuse, mafia, son father conflict, etc .. too many things in one package.. Conclusion: Nice to watch, especially the first story, but it could have been done better..

You should watch the beautiful cinematography in historical Cappadocia! Roy Kurtluyan has done a great job as director of photography on this part of the film!

Keep up the good work Roy, we're proud of an Armenian cinematographer's great work in this controversial film!

Yazi Tura has received 11 awards on Golden Orange (Altin Portakal) Film Festival in October 2004. Awards include: Best Film, Best Actor (Olgun Simsek), Best Director (Ugur Yucel), and many more.

Ugur Yucel,the giant movie star of Turkish cinema, is very successful in his directorial debut.In his movie,he has very impressively described the different and dramatical stories of two men who had been wounded in the war lasting for nearly 20 years at Southeast region of Turkey.This movie must be accepted as the first movie based on this terrible conflict.This war has affected every individual living in Turkey and everybody have something to say on this war.So in my opinion, Yucel has filled the biggest gap in Turkish cinema with this brilliant movie.Olgun Simsek is acting wonderfully and showing his linguistic ability especially when he is talking in Middle Anatolian accent. I wish many more people to watch this movie and the movie gets all the credits that it deserves..

This movie is far away from what we were used to in Turkish cinema. In fact, this picture has no hope whatsoever inside, and that kind of depresses you, besides a huge slap of reality. I think the movie is not made for criticizing anyone or anything, it is made to show how real, ordinary people are situated in our daily life. Contains black humor sometimes, it is dark and so real that it creeps you out. The acting is not even close to bad, actors have really got into their roles. And the directing is, a little new but better than I have expected. This movie is in the 1st rank in my favorite Turkish movies, and i think most of the people who watched it would agree with me