Country: Turkey
Original title: Itirazim Var (lit. I have an objection)
Director: Onur Ünlü
Year: 2014
A man is shot in the mosque during morning prayer. Unhappy with how the Police is handling the investigation, feeling some obligation towards his community and being very curious by nature, the mosque's imam starts looking for the culprit on his own. Of course, the case turns out to be more complex than it seemed at the beginning, the protagonist keeps meeting dead end after dead end (read: he solves several unrelated cases because his leads are misleading) and in the meantime he becomes a target of some unidentified people as well as one of the suspects. Not to mention his family problems haven't exactly gone for holidays either.
Let's Sin feels like a pretty formulaic detective black comedy, but somehow - I still haven't figured out why - it isn't one. The reason I came to this conclusion is because it had an ending typical for this genre and it felt completely out of place. Something about the movie made me anticipate that the formula will be broken and when I read online reviews I see I wasn't the only one. But regardless what it was that gave me such idea, the movie has the mood of detective black comedy and it's great because it's a genre that is horribly underexploited in recent popular cinema. Maybe it was my hunger for movies of that sort and such humor that made me enjoy it very much and remember it fondly despite several very obvious and major flaws.
The film biggest strength is the main protagonist, Selman Bulut. He is a very interesting - or even intriguing - and immediately likable character. He's a middle-aged man who tried many things in his life before he finally became an imam: we learn he used to serve in the army, he was an artist, he's good at boxing (which we get to see) and well versed in world literature. He's a firm believer, no doubt, but at the same time he's very practical and flexible, sardonic and witty. He's very unusual and at the same time he's a perfectly common man and this is just one example of contradicting traits he combines in a believable way. It's difficult not to love his comments and remarks and his struggle to unearth the truth is what keeps You engaged all the time. He doesn't mind running the streets or using somewhat controversial methods to achieve his goal and it's all fun to see.
The general outline of the story is significantly above average too. It's filled with many good and fresh ideas, however, it can get a bit messy when it comes to details. Light and heavy mood are balanced well, humor is dosed generously and usually in the right places and the pacing is fine too. It's a quite dynamic movie in which more than enough happens to keep You entertained. Background score is really nice too and it highlights the mood the way I feel it should be done.
Unfortunately, Let's Sin has a drawback I already mentioned and it's very difficult to overlook - it has a rather poor ending. When everything was finally revealed it was somehow anti-climatic and I felt cheated. It turned out that the main protagonist has solved the case off-screen and just summarized it in the final scene when he faced the culprit. I understand that it's normal and to a certain degree even desirable for such movies to mislead the audience a bit. But the trick is to show the real clues in such a way that the viewer won't realize their significance, to hide them between some red herrings. Not to leave them out completely and then pretend they have been laying under viewer's nose all the time.
And as I've already written, it didn't match the movie at all. It confused me so much I was even wondering if it wasn't some sort of a spoof. Something like the final part of Murder by Death, only much more subtle and downplayed. But the culprit's motives and backstory were dead serious and hardly a suitable subject for jokes of any sort. So I assume it was simply badly written.
To sum it up Let's Sin would be a near perfect film if only somebody worked on the script a bit more. Everything else is really great but of course I can't guarantee that everyone will find it charming enough to outweigh flows in storytelling as I did.
Let's Sin feels like a pretty formulaic detective black comedy, but somehow - I still haven't figured out why - it isn't one. The reason I came to this conclusion is because it had an ending typical for this genre and it felt completely out of place. Something about the movie made me anticipate that the formula will be broken and when I read online reviews I see I wasn't the only one. But regardless what it was that gave me such idea, the movie has the mood of detective black comedy and it's great because it's a genre that is horribly underexploited in recent popular cinema. Maybe it was my hunger for movies of that sort and such humor that made me enjoy it very much and remember it fondly despite several very obvious and major flaws.
The film biggest strength is the main protagonist, Selman Bulut. He is a very interesting - or even intriguing - and immediately likable character. He's a middle-aged man who tried many things in his life before he finally became an imam: we learn he used to serve in the army, he was an artist, he's good at boxing (which we get to see) and well versed in world literature. He's a firm believer, no doubt, but at the same time he's very practical and flexible, sardonic and witty. He's very unusual and at the same time he's a perfectly common man and this is just one example of contradicting traits he combines in a believable way. It's difficult not to love his comments and remarks and his struggle to unearth the truth is what keeps You engaged all the time. He doesn't mind running the streets or using somewhat controversial methods to achieve his goal and it's all fun to see.
The general outline of the story is significantly above average too. It's filled with many good and fresh ideas, however, it can get a bit messy when it comes to details. Light and heavy mood are balanced well, humor is dosed generously and usually in the right places and the pacing is fine too. It's a quite dynamic movie in which more than enough happens to keep You entertained. Background score is really nice too and it highlights the mood the way I feel it should be done.
Unfortunately, Let's Sin has a drawback I already mentioned and it's very difficult to overlook - it has a rather poor ending. When everything was finally revealed it was somehow anti-climatic and I felt cheated. It turned out that the main protagonist has solved the case off-screen and just summarized it in the final scene when he faced the culprit. I understand that it's normal and to a certain degree even desirable for such movies to mislead the audience a bit. But the trick is to show the real clues in such a way that the viewer won't realize their significance, to hide them between some red herrings. Not to leave them out completely and then pretend they have been laying under viewer's nose all the time.
And as I've already written, it didn't match the movie at all. It confused me so much I was even wondering if it wasn't some sort of a spoof. Something like the final part of Murder by Death, only much more subtle and downplayed. But the culprit's motives and backstory were dead serious and hardly a suitable subject for jokes of any sort. So I assume it was simply badly written.
To sum it up Let's Sin would be a near perfect film if only somebody worked on the script a bit more. Everything else is really great but of course I can't guarantee that everyone will find it charming enough to outweigh flows in storytelling as I did.
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