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Valley of the Wolves Iraq

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Valley Of The Wolves Iraq
Kurtlar Vadisi Irak
Directed by Serdar Akar
Produced by Raci Şaşmaz
Written by Raci Şaşmaz
Bahadır Özdener
Starring Necati Şaşmaz
Billy Zane
Ghassan Massoud
Gary Busey
Diego Serrano
Gürkan Uygun
Bergüzar Korel
Music by Gökhan Kırdar
Distributed by Pana Film
Released 2006-02-03
Running time 122 minutes
Language Turkish, English, Arabic and Kurdish
Budget $10,000,000
IMDb profile

Valley of the Wolves Iraq (Turkish: Kurtlar Vadisi Irak) is a popular and controversial 2006 Turkish film based on a television series of the same name that has been a hit in Turkey for three seasons.

Filmed with a budget of 10 million U.S. dollars and released in 2006, Valley of the Wolves is the most expensive film ever made in Turkey.

Contents

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Cast

Necati Sasmaz Polat Alemdar
Billy Zane Sam William Marshall
Tito Ortiz American Major Commander 2
Ghassan Massoud Sheikh Abdurrahman Halis Kerkuki
Bergüzar Korel Leila
Gürkan Uygun Memati Bas
Diego Serrano Dante
Kenan Çoban Abdulhey Coban
Erhan Ufak Erhan Ufak
Gary Busey Doctor
Spencer Garrett Journalist George Baltimore
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Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The movie opens with a real-life incident: the arrest on July 4, 2003 of 11 Turkish special forces soldiers and 13 civilians by U.S. troops in the northern Iraqi town of Sulaymaniyah. This arrest is infamous in Turkey as the so-called "Hood event". The soldiers were led out of their headquarters at gunpoint, with hoods over their heads and subsequently detained for sixty hours before being released. Donald Rumsfeld later issued a statement of regret for the detention, but many Turks took great offence at the incident.

In the film, one of the special forces troops, Suleyman Aslan is so humiliated by the event that he takes his own life after writing a letter to his friend, Polat Alemdar (played by Necati Şaşmaz, shown in large profile on the poster).

Alemdar is a Turkish intelligence agent who has recently severed links to the government agency for which he worked. Determined to avenge his friend's humiliation, Alemdar travels to Iraq along with several of his colleagues to seek vengeance on the American commander whose actions led to Aslan's suicide.

At a checkpoint, Alemdar and his team kill three Iraqi soldiers. They attach explosives to the foundation of a hotel. They demand commander Sam William Marshall (played by American actor Billy Zane), who they allege was responsible for the hood incident, to come to the hotel. He complies. The group threatens to blow up the hotel unless Marshall and some of his men let themselves be led out of the hotel while hooded. Marshall refuses and brings in a group of Iraqi children as human shields. Alemdar gives in and leaves.

In a later scene, an execution of a Western journalist by Iraqi rebels is about to take place, but an esteemed-by-the-rebels sheikh prevents it and offers the journalist the opportunity to kill the rebel who was about to kill him—the rebel does not resist, but the journalist declines the offer.

Marshall raids an Arab wedding and massacres a number of civilians (see controversy, below), including the groom. The bride Leila wants revenge by becoming a suicide bomber, but is talked out of it by the sheikh who says it is against Sharia (Islamic religious law).

Alemdar and Leila meet and Leila helps Alemdar. Together they manage to kill Marshall, but Leila is also killed.

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Controversy

The film has proved controversial due to its portrayal of some US military personnel and Jewish characters as being responsible for a number of real and fictional atrocities and war crimes:

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Film-Messages

  • Patriotism to death
  • Moslems unite (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic etc.)
  • The USA is the marshal for the world
  • The USA missionates the gulf region
  • Terrorism is no answer to western human rights violation
  • Suicide bomber do not act in gods sense


Some commentators have expressed concern at the film's anti-Americanism and potential to incite Turkish nationalism that may ultimately be detrimental to Turkey, particularly as the United States has been a strong supporter of Turkey's entry into the European Union and has opposed an independent Kurdistan. Both stances are endorsed by the Turkish government and, polls indicate, the majority of the Turkish population.

The film's scriptwriter Bahadir Ozdener has defended the film by saying:

"Our film is a sort of political action. Maybe 60 or 70 percent of what happens on screen is factually true. Turkey and America are allies, but Turkey wants to say something to its friend. We want to say the bitter truth. We want to say that this is wrong."

The movie's director, Serdar Akar, went further and said the film was supposed to promote a dialogue between religions. [1]

In an interview with Bild am Sonntag on February 19, 2006, Bavarian premier Edmund Stoiber called upon German theatre owners to stop showing Valley of the Wolves. Shortly afterward, Germany's largest cinema chain, CinemaxX, pulled the film, which had been popular among Germany's large Turkish community, from its theatres.

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International reception

  • The film has pulled in record audiences on its release in Turkey, capitalizing on widespread opposition to the Iraq war.
  • Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Prime Minister of Turkey, viewed the film with his wife and his cabinet before it came out and liked it. [2]
  • Bülent Arınç, the President of the Turkish Parliament called the movie "an extraordinary film that will go into history". [3]
  • The film has received only minor exposure in the United States and is not widely known. However, on the satirical The Daily Show on the US Comedy Network, Jon Stewart lampooned Billy Zane and Gary Busey, both mainstream American actors, for appearing in the film ("Gary Busey...who apparently was available"). During the same segment, several clips were played from American films portraying unidentified terrorists of Muslim, Arab or Middle Eastern extraction.
  • The reception in the Turkish media was split. Some called it a milestone for the Turkish film industry—others warned the movie might lead to a strengthening of religious extremism. [4]
  • In Germany, the home of European Union's largest Turkish community, the film was heavily criticized for its alledged xenophobia and virulent anti-Americanism by several politicians from both the right and left spectrum of mainstream German politics and in several leading newspapers.
  • The production, being a Turkish motion picture presenting a poor image of the U.S., had been declared as “revenge for Midnight Express”, a 1978 US movie showing a poor image of Turkey.
  • Taken as an indicator of general interest, Google trends show that the search term "Valley of the Wolves Iraq" (or "...Irak") has been keyed in the most frequently in Turkey, with The Netherlands, Germany and the U.S.A. following. On country basis once again, the film's Turkish title, "Kurtlar Vadisi Irak", has been searched the most extensively in Azerbaijan, coming before even Turkey, and the leading search languages were Turkish, German and Dutch. [1] [2] [3]
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Notes

  1. ^ (German)Letsch, 2006
  2. ^ (German) Letsch, Constanze "Dialog der Kulturen" in Jungle World 2006-02-22 ISSN 1613-0766.
  3. ^ (German) Letsch, 2006: "ein extraordinärer Film, der Geschichte machen wird."
  4. ^ (German) Letsch, 2006
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External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_of_the_Wolves_Iraq"
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