art of love (now streaming on Netflix) is for those of us who haven’t seen enough elaborate art heist movies, which should be about none of us, since elaborate art heist movies sell for a dime a dozen before you even apply your BOGO coupon . But that doesn’t mean this Turkish romantic action thriller isn’t worth 99 minutes of your life; Sometimes a movie can perfect the formula, something that practically has to be done for subgenres as tired as this one. . Of course, that makes the task of making an elaborate art heist movie even more difficult, and I’m afraid art of love He’s just not up to the task.
ART OF LOVE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The essence: Here in Budapest a very HIGH TECH art heist is happening, with the hacker’s frantic tappity-tappity-tapping and the security system screwdriver’s cutting of cables and the thief’s own casual stroll and capture of a painting. They’re a team and they’re as in sync as any art heist team in movie history. WHO is This thief, anyway? That’s what Alin (Esra Bilgic) wants to know. She and her partner Ozan (Ushan Cakir) are from Interpol’s Art Theft Apprehension Department and are hot on the thief’s heels. The strange thing is that he does not take the most valuable paintings; it’s almost as if he’s curating a collection. “We’re dealing with a romantic thief,” Alin assesses, and she should know the work of an art expert, since she is an art expert herself.
And so, Alin follows the trail while annoying generic spy/heist movie music plays on the soundtrack, something that happens so persistently, it’s like a puppy who keeps dropping a dirty, drool-soaked tennis ball on your back. lap and win. Don’t take no for an answer, because “no” is not something that is within your capabilities to understand. Do you know that music can be like a character in a movie? In art of love, music is the almighty lord and savior god himself, omnipresent and hovering above everything, watching you as you scratch your butt, shower, and do all the embarrassing little personal hygiene tasks you do every day. I mean, the music from this movie can disappear forever. Go away, music, please go.
Where was it? Right: Revisiting this public domain-worthy score to get to the plot, which thickens when Alin discovers that the thief is Guney (Birkan Sokullu), who turns out to be his ex-lover. The same ex-lover who disappeared off the face of the earth, leaving her heartbroken, and it can be assumed that he went into hiding after stealing some valuable work of art, or fell into a crevice and had to cut his arm on one of those small cheese spreaders to rescue themselves. Which could be? The plot thickens even more when we realize that Guney is a very wealthy businessman, so why would he steal paintings that he could probably buy with the coins he has in the console of his Benz? Mmm, says Thinky Guy Emoji. Hmm.
Anyway, Alin’s plan is to UNDERGROUND the situation. It helps that Guney doesn’t know that he became an Interpol agent after he escaped, which makes it a little easier for her to catch him, you know, rekindle the old flame and see if he wants to try cooking with her. again. It works, of course, and she manages to convince his stereotypical gruff boss to give her the go-ahead to go with Guney to Prague and wherever his private jet takes them, and maybe catch him red-handed. . But oh man, Guney is still quite charming and looks great when he does his morning training with the pommel horse, and with all that money and luxury, Alin remembers that life with him is “like a fairy tale.” Will she remain committed to busting his ass straight to prison, or will he become her SO again? ALL SPOILERS WILL REMAIN LOCKED IN A SECRET, AIRTIGHT BASEMENT ROOM, BEHIND A DOOR WITH A HIGH TECH SECURITY LOCK THAT REQUIRES VERBAL AND FACIAL RECOGNITION THAT ONLY EXISTS IN SPY HEIST MOVIES AND CAN NEVER BE HACKED UNLESS BE A CHARACTER IN A SPY-HEIST MOVIE.
What movies will it remind you of?: Best hilarious pommel horse scene since Fifty Shades Darkerwhich was the most hilarious pommel horse scene since Gymkata!
Performance worth seeing: There’s no doubt, Bilgic has a charismatic presence on screen. But this cold void of a script gives him a character with no discernible personality.
Memorable dialogue: Guney refers to the film that art of love Maybe it wants to be: “Have you never seen Mission Impossible?”
Sex and skin: One of the many flaws in this foray into the sexy clichés of spy and heist movies is that there is no sex in it.
Our opinion: art of love It’s so weak, that shitty music, that never stops and tells us what to feel because the story and the characters don’t make us feel anything, it stinks so much and drives me CRAZY, it threatens to become the entire movie, consuming it’s like a baleen whale before a huge school of krill. The film consists almost entirely of visual and narrative shortcuts, cutting out all the staples of the genre: the elaborate setups and executions of various heist plans and raids, the flashbacks of what In fact happened, the sexual electricity between two visually pleasing protagonists, the chase sequence through the streets of a beautiful old city with cobblestone streets. It’s all presented with minimal energy and annoyingly slick execution, in a quest to be exactly like 200 other movies of the same kind, except duller. It’s a lot of flashy editing, cinematic gloss, and no substantial art. It creates the illusion of arousal instead of actual arousal.
Directed by Recai Karagoz, the film wears its original Hollywood influences on its sleeve: it’s a depressingly tepid take on a fiery romance. The Thomas Crown Affair or an art world crime thriller like The international; recent Netflix programmer Raise I spent a lot more money on roughly the same premise; and if only it were as memorably terrible as Mortdecai, we could entertain ourselves. There is no chemistry or sexual tension between Bilgic and Sokullul, who look charming and seem relatively committed to a repetitive script, which betrays and washes them away with its tide of boring genre tropes. If it were a rudimentary production with a few rough edges, it might be more endearing, but it’s silly and illogical and, by the end, mostly nonsensical. It’s a junk food movie that fills the void without offering any nutrition.
Our call: art of love? More like The art of throwing it out the window! SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic living in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
