IMDb Bottom 100 Review - Number 34 Emret Komutanim: Sah Mat aka Yes sir

Just like Hannibal I love both elephants and when a good plan comes together. When every intricate little aspect of a well laid plan executes with clock work precision, despite possible involvement of elephants - notorious for being unable to adhere to a time table. It’s beautiful to watch, and gives you the sense of something lurking behind the scenes of life, pulling threads so events fall in your favor. Imagine that magnificent scene, and then picture the polar opposite of that. What do you now see? This movie. Please, if you will, let your eyes wander downwards and soak up the thoughts in my head put into words on your screen. Yes, you guessed it. It’s…

Pretty much how I felt watching this movie.

Emret Komutanim: Sah Mat aka Yes, sir (2007)

Another Turkish movie. And, I fear, not the last one at that either. I don’t know if the Turks are particularly horrible at movie making, or if the Turkish movie watching crowd are particularly apt at rating said movies for shit on IMDb. It’s really hard for me to say, because I do not speak and/or read Turkish. Coincidentally that also made picking up nuances in this movie exceedingly tough, since I was unable to procure a set of English subtitles. Or indeed any of the numerous other languages I would understand better than Turkish. The plot wasn’t super tricky to follow, don’t get me wrong, but even so, I’m thinking I would’ve understood why I hated this movie a little better than I do now, where my hate is largely unsubstantiated by anything else than “It was superbly boring and I hated every character in it.” That may not be much different from the previous some 70 films I’ve had the dis/pleasure of reviewing for you guys, but still, as a guy with, what I think of as, a critical sense, it’s nice to understand why strong emotions are invoked. But we’ll see if I can reflect on my thoughts as this review is written. 

Levent and his colleagues' office. I like the little coffee table setup in front of her desk. Also is that two identical pictures of Ataturk in one room? Bold.

Plotwise, this movie was both simple and confusing. Like I said, I understood what was going on, but never why it was. A bad guy, Karpov, surrounded by matching ladies in silver hair and skimpy outfits, look to cause a military guy of undeterminable rank, some harm. Either personally or in his capacity of being a military officer. He accomplishes this, or attempts to accomplish this, by exploiting an annual event at the barracks where a group of special needs people are allowed to don uniforms and participate in military drills and exercises for a day. With this group of special needs people, he sends one of his non special needs guys cleverly disguised with slightly goofy looking glasses with a piece of thick white string tied around his neck. Blends right in. The ringer manages to switch out the officer’s phone, so Karpov can track him on this Nintendo looking screen, and real time move little action figures around on a crude, and ridiculously pointless, scale model. 

The monitor on which Karpov, well, monitored Levent and his crew of ragtag soldiers. 2007, ladies and gentlemen.

Karpov lures the officer, whose name might be Levent (?) and his forces out into a remote location. I don’t know what pretenses are set up to accomplish this, but it happens. Some of Karpov’s henchmen drive an 18 wheeler into the location, rig it with a bomb, and bank on Levent and his group being close by when it goes off. They are. So close, in fact, that the plan would’ve succeeded, had this not been a really shitty movie. Everybody survives a pretty big explosion, despite being in a 20 feet radius of it. Oh well. Levent is kind of miffed by this whole thing, but decide to send his men back to the barracks. Underway they are tricked by, what I’m gonna have to label as, the lamest and most preposterous hot-ladies-broke-down-car scheme I’ve ever witnessed. So many stereotypes are inadequately purported here, I was almost in shock for a few minutes. Obviously every single one of these super inappropriate dudes are captured and brought to Karpov’s compound. Levent and his, apparently equally ranked, female colleague (possibly girlfriend. We don’t really know), go on a rescue mission, and despite complete lack of control over anything from tactical approaches to trigger discipline and several instances of conduct unbecoming, they save the crew and incapacitate Karpov. The end. 

Levent dons guns akimbo and utilizes his military training to invoke deep concentration, before he shoots two literal fucking bombs at close range.

I can’t figure out what Karpov’s motivation was. He had enough money it seemed, with all the shitty hardware and the obscene amount of women and henchmen he had in his employ. Also a tracking device in Levent’s phone kept a Super Mario looking avatar updated real time on Karpov’s main viewer screen. One silver haired lady was almost constantly at the computer, punching buttons and fiddling with levers. I’m not sure why, but there we are. And then Karpov spent a lot of time moving little toy military vehicles and figurines around on a mock battlefield. It was stupid and made him look like a 5 year old moron. Karpov was played by Mehmet Ali Erbil, a person I fear we (you and I, dear reader… you and I) will not be rid of that easily. His unimpressive catalogue includes two more movies I will be watching in the near future, and his performance in Yes, Sir taken into consideration, I’m pretty depressed about that. I couldn’t find anybody on the cast list who have appeared in other movies that one might know. Ali Erbil voiced Woody in Toy Story and Toy Story 2 (Turkish versions obviously) but had apparently fallen from grace when the time came for a third outing for Woody and his gang. Perhaps they had seen these movies of his, and figured fuck that. Rather risk the continuity snafu in a different voice for Woody than have this guy ruin more movies. 

General's office. Or the Turkish equivalent. Same god damn picture of Ataturk again. It's a thing apparently.

The military ranks piqued my curiosity, but like the rest of the movie it left me severely disappointed. All officers (I assume) have insignia on their collar flips, and I assumed they indicated rank, but Levent and the woman and somebody who is clearly above them in the chain of command, all have this special emblem on their shirts. The ranking officer has several stars on his shoulders, however, where Levent only has two. I checked Turkish military rank and found nothing that matches. So that’s kind of a bust. I could’ve learned something, but even that was denied. Everything was denied, as far as I’m concerned, in this movie. A reviewer on IMDb tore this movie a new asshole, and still gave it 3 out of 10 stars. I don’t know why. He compared it to the 1980s classic franchise Police Academy. I don’t know if I quite agree, but I suppose the inept and supposedly lovable dipshits save the day concept is somewhat similar. However, these dorks accomplish precisely nothing, they save no day and they basically just fuck around aimlessly for 100 minutes, until Levent, in a glorious fucking stunt, shoots two bombs at 4 feet, to free his men from two cages. I mean he literally points a gun in each hand at the bombs on the bars of these cages, and shoots them. Like what is that even supposed to accomplish? Granted, bomb disarmament and dismantling is only a hobby of mine, but it takes skills well above the UN sanctioned 9000 to be able to safely shoot bombs at close range. Insanity. 

I wonder if subtitles would've let me to a greater understanding of these girls' matching outfits, and why they mostly just stood around.

I fear for the next few Turkish movies coming at me. This was from 2007, and still I could not find subtitles for it. The next two are from the year before, so I don’t hold high hopes. Say what you will about the many many many crappy movies I’ve watched so far, but at least when they’re in English, I can understand just what it is about them that I loathe so very much. I feel handicapped watching this. On the plus side, I can stick this movie on, and pretty much do something else, since the dialogue isn’t keeping me marginally distracted. It’s just moving images on screen for a dull 100 minutes, until credits roll and I get to write this. So there are pros and cons. Mostly cons. Even the pros are kind of cons. Next week, thankfully, I’ll be back in good old sub-Hollywood to review a wonderful movie featuring Mariah Carey. I literally can wait. 

The scene of these girls in the back of military vehicle with super inappropriately behaving soldiers made me uncomfortable.