Valley of the Wolves is a Turkish television series about a cop who has severe plastic surgery and changes his identity to go undercover to take down Turkish organized crime from the inside. It was extremely popular, and actually very good, good enough to spawn two sequels (one of which was canceled due to political controversy in spite of high ratings) and a movie. That movie is Valley of the Wolves: Iraq. Billy Zane and Gary Busey are in it.

Valley of the Wolves: Iraq is based on the Hood Event, an incident in which US forces accidentally captured a number of Turkish soldiers due to a mutual intelligence mix-up and held them in conditions that were sufficiently humiliating and traumatic to lead to the suicide of one of the Turkish officers.

In real life, the Turkish people saw this as a huge afront to their honor; in the movie Polat Alemdar, hero of Valley of the Wolves, was a friend of the officer who killed himself and decides to get revenge for the incident by going into Iraq and capturing the American general in charge of the occupation (played by Billy Zane), forcing him to wear a hood, and then letting him go unharmed, though the situation escalates well past that by the end of the movie.

The movie also contains fictionalized versions of every other major scandal and abuse by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, generally played in a way that paints the Americans in a bad light, but all of the incidents are based on real events (except, maybe, the organ harvesting operation).

Some have denounced the participation of once-famous American actors Billy Zane and Gary Busey in this movie, (though little mention is made of the American unknowns who have minor and generally more abrasive roles, such as the soldier who shoots into a truck full of captured civilians, killing several, under the excuse that he is making air holes in the cargo area so that they don't suffocate) but English speaking audiences will find them both extremely sympathetic anti-villains, doing what they believe is right, even if the movie does present them as misguided.

Gary Busey has specifically been accused of antisemitism for his portrayal of a Jewish doctor working as a civilian contractor at Abu Ghraib, but Busey's character is the single most compassionate American in the entire movie, taking the soldiers around him to task for their abuses of prisoners and generally being nice to the prisoners under his care. He even gives them puts them to sleep when harvesting their kidneys for sale (and he only takes one per prisoner, you can live a perfectly normal life one just one kidney) and gives them an ample amount of morphine afterward, which he doesn't have to do at all.

Zane's character, General Sam Marshal, likewise, has several moments where he is presented as a good person in a difficult situation doing what he believes is right and trying to achieve the greatest good for the people in Iraq and has a few long and prominent conversations with Busey's character in which he expresses his generally altruistic concerns and motivations.

There is also a major subplot about a woman whose entire family was slaughtered by Americans in an accidental massacre (one new nervous American solider held his finger on the trigger of his rifle instead of along the side as safe procedure dictates, once the first shot was fired, the chain reaction was pretty much unstoppable) attempting to become a suicide bomber but them being talked out of it by her spiritual advisory, who has a rather long expository monologue about how Islam permits neither suicide nor the murder of civilians and he also prevents local rebels from executing a captured journalist using a similar monologue.

It all ends, of course, with a huge low-budget firefight, not quite up to Hollywood standards, but much better than you'd find in the average B-grade direct to video release. Turkey isn't exactly known for its action blockbusters, and in that context the action scenes in this movie are extraordinarily successful.

Cool review. I'll have to keep my eyes open for this flick.

That sounds awesome. I'll have to see if I can find a copy as well.

Yes, but can it top the "TRUCK, I BEG YOU TO STOP!" Iranian (?) propaganda film with French people portraying Americans?

French dude smoking a cigar who is supposed to be US Army officer: "Shend zhem to Abu Ghraib!"
Sympathetic middle eastern dude interceeding for main characters: "Bhut zir, vill yhuu want to lose zhee honeur of interrogating them yourzelf?"
French dude, after puffing on cigar: "Yhuu zill go far with us."

Most of the American soldiers are played by South African actors, and it includes this exchange:


Soldier 1: They'll be traveling for hours. They will die of suffocation in there.
Soldier 2: You are right! Stop the car! Stop it!

-Soldier 2 gets out and starts shooting up the truck's cargo area-

Soldier 1:What the hell do you think you're doing?
Soldier 2: I'm helping them breathe. They're not going to die of suffocation anymore.

See, that should have been, "CAR, I BEG YOU TO STOP!".

EDIT:

How can anything compare with this greatness?



http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page...&ID=SP89105

I just got finished with a deployment to Iraq and while there I actually had the opportunity to watch this piece of cinematic filth. While it doesn't try to make Americans out to be Darth Vader-style villains, it really is nothing more than a giant propaganda piece showing every single possible excess and mistake made by soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan since the start of the war on terror. Without getting into the political implications, I will simply say that you shouldn't watch it because it is anti-American garbage. And if I ever meet Billy Zane, I will punch him in the face.

remind me, both USA and Turkey are members of NATO, correct?

yay for lingering "anything is acceptable as long as its not communism" alliances...

Even worse: Turkey and Greece are both members of NATO, and those two countries hate each other with a fire like the heart of a sun.

oh, the joys...

If you do punch Billy Zane be sure to get it on video.

But if I never watched anything anti-american, I'd have missed out on all those hilarious Soviet propaganda videos I found back in 2000 or so!

(The not-so-subtle message here, dear readers, is that 'being anti-American' shouldn't be sufficient reason to avoid something. Better to form your own judgement after watching it, neh?)

its better to watch and laugh, then dont watch and grumble

Dude, I love Communist propaganda from the 60s. Those hand-painted posters have so much energy to them. I also like the big band music.