Review of The Ottoman Lieutenant (2017) by Refinedinsights — 29 Jul 2023

Picture this: I sat down to watch 'The Ottoman Lieutenant', expecting a captivating love story set during WWI. Instead, I got a revisionist history class that would make even a conspiracy theorist squirm.

For a movie claiming to be a romance, it seems to be more in love with rewriting history than delivering on the promised plot. It's like someone handed them a history book, and they decided, "Nah, let's use this for kindling instead.".

I mean, seriously. They portray the Armenians, who were the actual victims of the Armenian Genocide, as some rival gang with their own army. This is beyond absurd. Come on, guys! Armenians were the good folks living on their ancestral land for thousands of years before the Ottoman Empire showed up and decided to architect the first genocide of the century starring 1.5 million Armenians. Not cool!

Except it gets worse. The film seems to be suggesting that the victims of that genocide were militarily on par with the victimizers. That's right! They're hinting that the victims had an army to rival the oppressors. Can you imagine a movie coming out as a response to'Schindler's List, where the Jews are a global superpower going toe-to-toe with the Nazis? Yeah, me neither.

The movie is a less entertaining, more infuriating version of 'The Promise'. The two are like night and day, or rather, like truth and a badly spun lie. 'The Promise' gives an honest depiction of the Armenian Genocide, while 'The Ottoman Lieutenant' seems to be playing a cruel game of historical Mad Libs.

To the unsuspecting viewer, 'The Ottoman Lieutenant' might seem like a harmless war movie. But let me tell you, it's as harmless as a shark in a kiddie pool. It attempts to wipe clean a genocide that the world should never, ever forget.

To sum up, if you're a fan of history, truth, and not supporting denialism, steer clear of 'The Ottoman Lieutenant'. There are plenty of films out there that entertain without trying to pull a fast one on history. This film, though? It's about as entertaining as a root canal and about as accurate as a GPS system from 1915.