The Guilty Are Among Us

Erksan had emerged as a ground-breaking new artist/auteur in Turkish cinema at the end of 1950s and this spark had been usually influential for the following 10 years... but this movie from that period, turns out to be quite disappointing and childish in the way it uses the spaces and objects as symbols or metaphors... in terms of the emphasis made on some crucial-basic social issues, this childish treatment accompanied by bad script, bad dialogue and bad acting ruins the potential of a good story ... the constant use of some jazz melodies as the soundtrack is not that effective and often pointless... 5 stars for the cinematography and the labour of the film crew...

Metin Erksan's melodrama contains familiar ingredients - the passive heroine (Belgin Doruk), the clean-cut hero (Tamer Yigit) and the bad guy (Ekrem Bora). Set in and around the sea, it is another tale of love, deceit and rapacity characteristic of Yesilcam. There are plenty of fight sequences, even though the sound of fist hitting chin is not quite in sync with the on screen action. There is also fake blood that appears on the face of one of the combatants, even though it did not seem to be there before. However the film has mote than its fair share of entertaining moments - the sequence of rapid close-ups between the three protagonists sets the mood for the beginning and end of each sequence; the music - often dramatic at times - sets the scene; and the beach-party atmosphere, evoked with a decorum quite foreign to the American equivalent, is redolent of a time long passed. Definitely one of the nostalgia freak.