Rampage (aka Turkish Rambo)
When I saw the
poster announcing that my local cinema would be showing Turkish Rambo
and that it was from the same director as Turkish Star Wars and Turkish
Rocky, I figured there is a Turkish guy who likes the movies I do but feels
that these films need some sort of cultural tweeking
to make them accessible to his countrymen.
I am glad to see Turkish people making their own Stallone-free Stallone
movies, because when I saw Cleopatra Jones I thought they were a little
too dependant on Americans’ help because in that movie they fly in Cleo to take
on Turkish drug lords.
When big
Hollywood remakes small foreign films many people accuse them of swapping the
film’s soul for an upgrade in production value.
So it would stand to reason that by taking a Hollywood movie and
remaking in a foreign country with lower production values would be like a soul
infusion. Let’s take a look into that
soul, shall we?
The movie
starts with its only CGI, which is a screensaver of the flapping Turkish flag
like the one Madonna rapped in front of in her American Life music video. We learn that Serdar
will be playing Serdar to keep things simple. Serdar is Turkish
for Rambo. Serdar
is a bodybuilder guy with David Hasselhoff hair. We first meet him in prison where he is
apparently some sort of disgraced soldier who is locked up in chains on a pile
of rubble. We learn that he is going to
be transferred to, I guess, a more judiciously appropriate pile of rubble along
with two mountain bandits.
Using a
state-of-the-art ice cream truck the prisoners are transported along a dirt
road. The guards have obviously been
trained to ignore it when prisoners say they need to pee, so the prisoners use
the new escape technique of saying one of them vomited and then pouncing on the
guards when they stop the truck and open the back.
Serdar is bound in economical, although unconventional, leg
irons that simply connect his right arm to his left ankle by way of a loose
chain. He severs the connection by
heating up the middle and striking it until it breaks, then reveals that the
chain was simply wrapped loosely around his wrist and ankle and could have been
easily removed without breaking the chain.
But better to break the chain to make sure before you try anything as
risky as waving your arm around and letting the chain fall off.
The film
develops some interesting action sequences showing that these people have
extreme difficulty mounting small hills.
They don’t use clever editing of tricky camera angles to deceive the
audience. They just show guys walking up
a hill and making agonizing noises while flexing their muscles as much as
possible.
We quickly
learn why Serdar prefers to use a knife as his weapon
of choice: guns in Turkey cannot hit anybody as long as they are performing a
tumbling motion. Serdar
and the mountain bandits evade law enforcement easily using this motion, which
makes me think maybe Turkish mountain police should just get some training in
throwing knives. Like how the cops in
England don’t carry pistols, the Turkish cops could make ninja stars their
thing.
The mountain
bandits are certain that Serdar’s chain smashing
skills will make him valuable to their leader, Ziya
(played the Turkish Vincent Price), but they are surprised to find that even
though he never leaves his mountain compound and allows no stranger to enter,
he prefers to do his own recruiting and is furious at his employees for
bringing Serdar to him. He orders a round of torture for his
employees and for Serdar. But Serdar holds up
well against it somehow remain smoothly clean-shaven despite days of
imprisonment and torture.
As it turns
out, kidnapping works different in Turkey.
Even though Ziya already has a wealthy
businessman hostage, getting the ransom isn’t as easy as asking his loved ones
to pay. In Turkey, you take one wealthy
man hostage so that he will tell you where you can find another wealthy man to
take hostage. Also, hostages are treated
to hookers.
Ziya somehow
realizes that he will need Serdar’s help and frees
him from his cement bondage to go kidnap the second hostage. Serdar gets back in
shape in a quick training montage. He
does a unique type of push-up where he stands against a tree and pushes himself
away and towards the tree. It must
really work because it makes his muscles very large. I’ve got lots of trees near where I live, but
I’ve never tried this. Just lazy I
guess.
Serdar journeys
across more perilous foothills with his love interest, whom he neither loves
nor has interest in. She talks a bit, Serdar tells her to shut up, then she gets mortally wounded
and gives the longest death speech I’ve ever heard, but Serdar
doesn’t tell her to shut up this time.
The film has
several more action sequences, not all of them thrilling hill-climbing ventures,
some of them gun-tumble fights and lots of fistfights. Serdar likes to
punch with both hands at once. I guess
he’s making up for that time his one arm was in a chain. Serdar returns with
the second hostage but kills Ziya and his mountain
bandits.
We learn that Serdar has been undercover this whole time and it was a big
secret operation to defeat the mountain bandits by infiltrating them, getting
into their complex, then leaving and coming back and attacking from the
outside. I’m sure all those prison
guards and cops Serdar killed were happy to help him
build his cred with the bad guys. This plot development isn’t exactly a
surprise, seeing as starting from the first scene we get army guys looking
right into the camera and telling us they’ve got an elite ass-kicker currently
undercover infiltrating the mountain bandits.
I didn’t think it was that gabby love interest lady, but maybe that red
herring fooled some audience members.
Serdar says he lives “to
serve his country and his nation”, I hope those
two don’t ever conflict. But maybe that
will be the plotline of Rampage 2: The First Turkish Blood Part 1 aka
Turkish Rambo 3. I really liked this
movie and I think if you like stuff like guns, knives, muscles, people’s hair
and clothing changing multiple times in the same scene, and hills, you will
like it too. I also think if Turkey is
going to continue to remake stuff like Rambo, Star Wars, Rocky
and Magnum P.I. they should stop applying to get in the European
Union. I mean, they’re not making Turkish
Taxi, or Run Turkish Lola Run, or Turkish Cinema Paradiso. It’s
time they realized where their true focus is. They clearly would rather be part
of the U.S.A. Embrace your destiny,
Turkey.
If you liked this, here are some other
related readings:
Rambo 4: The Stallone
Renaissance Part Two
Some throats were made to
be slit.
James Cameron’s sci-fi
classic gets re-Indomagined!
This motherfucker’s got
the touch of the poet.