Review of Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011) by Alex A — 06 Apr 2014

Imagine a film that start's with promise, but goes nowhere. It has plenty of opportunities, but in the end stays stagnate. Once Upon a Time In Anatolia is the embodiment of that sort of movie. Ironically, everything else besides the script is rock solid.

The cinematography is just about perfect, the ensemble cast of actors all deliver competent performances and its visual style is nothing short of stunning. The problem is that its probably one of the slowest paced movies I've ever seen in my life and nothing eventful happens in the entire span of 2 and half hours.

I'm not one who's against a movie with a slow pace, on the contrary I enjoy a slow burn thriller; especially when there's a good pay-off at the end. The problem with this film though is that every scene is drawn out to the most extensive amount of time possible and after a while the film just tires you out completely.

If this film had a better script, it could have very well been a masterpiece, but It had nothing of importance to say and made a premise that could have been really interesting into something so boring that it's not worth mentioning or remembering.