The Ottoman Lieutenant - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

The Ottoman Lieutenant



Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score: ​

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Movie
It’s not often that you get similarly themed movies come out in the SAME year. Movies like Volcano and Dante’s Peak, or Deep Impact and Armageddon. They come around once in a while, but not terribly often (at least in the blockbuster arena, DTV films are a whole nother ball of wax). That being said, it DOES happen, but the real rarity is a pair of movies, released a couple of weeks apart, on the SAME studio label, about the same general incident. Now THAT doesn’t come around very often. Much like The Promise that I reviewed HERE a few weeks back, The Ottoman Lieutenant deals with a love triangle between two opposing forces and a young woman in the beginning stages of World War I when the Ottoman Empire tried to wage genocide on the Armenians. While The Promise was a weak movie with a solid acting job, The Ottoman Lieutenant is a weak movie with a really bad acting job by all involved. Well, that and it was completely romanticized to the point of nonrecognition, and decided to hop the fence on what ACTUALLY happened by the Turks to the Armenians over 100 years ago.

I won’t bore you with the details, but like I said in my The Promise review, back in 1914 the first World War was just getting ready, and the Ottoman Empire not only joined the Axis powers, but used the chaos and instability of the war to try and exterminate all of the Armenian’s living in the empire. A genocide that is not as widely known as Hitler’s war on the Jews, but still an incredibly sad part of human history.

This story revolves around a young nurse from Philadelphia named Lillie (Hera Hilmar) who thinks that she can be of better use in the backward world of the Ottoman Empire (medically speaking) than at home in the U.S. of A. Without truly thinking it through, Lillie packs up some supplies and uses her grandmother’s inheritance to ferry her way across the Ocean and meet up with a young American doctor by the name of Jude (Josh Hartnett), who is working his tail off in the wilds of Turkey. There she meets up with a handsome young Ottoman Lieutenant (thus the name of the movie) who begrudgingly takes her across the mountain to her destination. There she, Jude and this Lieutenant Ismail (Michiel Huisman) form a strange love triangle.

The romance here is ridiculously embellished and given a strange dichotomy to the romance in The Promise, including taking the opposite side of the “good vs. bad” equation. Here the turks are seen as civilized folks, just waging a war with the Armenians acting as rebels instead of what really happened. The rebellious Armenian Christians are seen as semi savages, with hook noses and crummy looking clothing, while Ismail is this upstanding Turkish citizen who doesn’t want anything bad to happen to anyone. Jude is obviously siding with the Armenian rebels, and this acts as a catalyst for the conflict between himself and Ismail, but I was rather puzzled that the movie COMPLETELY glossed over the fact that the Armenians weren’t just rebels. They were fighting for their lives as the Turks took chaotic opportunity of the war to exterminate each and every Armenian they came across, even though they weren’t a physical threat (the Armenian Christians and Islamic Turks had been at each others throats for centuries, and the inbred hate was legendary). What we really see is a sappy romance between this gorgeous and upstanding pale skinned Turk, and the misconceptions of the opposing forces (including poor Jude, who doesn’t stand a chance with Lillie and her star struck romance).

I didn’t really feel The Promise was that great of a movie, but it at least had some excellent A-list actors who did a solid job with what they were given. Christian Bale kind of slept walked through it, but Oscar Isaacs was fantastic. Here we just have a couple of no name actors and Josh Hartnett, who is completely miscast as Jude. .The sappy romance and the overly softened view of a horrific time in world history makes for a rather painful watch, and I can’t really recommend the film at all unless you’re curious to see how it compares against The Promise.




Rating:

Rated R for some war violence




Video:

Shot on what appears to be Arri Alexa cameras and Red Dragon cameras, The Ottoman Lieutenant is magnificently shot and framed on Blu-ray. The period piece drama is given a light wheat coloring to the grading, but otherwise shows exceptional colors (primary colors of the Turkish head dresses pop off the screen, as well as the earth and green composite hillsides in the wilds) despite the light honey coloring. Clarity is exceptional, with great fine detailing around the faces, as well as background items like sweat dripping from a horse, or the textures and rough hewn nature of the crude village walls. Black levels appear to be quite deep and inky, and I only noticed a few flickers of banding to detract from an otherwise incredible Blu-ray encode.





Audio:

I was surprised and a little bit disappointed with the 5.1 DTS-HD MA track on the disc, though. The front soundstage is well done, but the surround usage seems to be limited to the score, and the dynamic range is heavily squashed. Dialog gets muffled with some of the background information, and the track just feels “thin” above all else. Battle sequences that should have carried a goodly amount of weight to them felt hollow and empty, and I was double checking my subwoofers to make sure that nothing was wrong with them. While the overall clarity and use of the front sound stage is quite decent, the lack of any real dynamic range and squashed low end just leaves the track feeling thinner than it has any right to be considering the genre.

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Extras:

• Nothing

Final Score: ​

The Promise may not have been the greatest film of the year, but it at least was formed on a solid scrip t and good acting. The Ottoman Lieutenant suffers greatly from poor acting, a weak script and several plot contrivances that had me really chuckling. Not to mention the fact that the softening of what happened during that time is a bit off putting, especially with how harsh The Promise was in regards to the horrors that happened to the Armenians. The audio is only OK, but the video is quite amazing on Blu-ray. Extras are non existent, and with the weak storytelling and mediocre audio has me giving this a distinct and most definite thumbs down. Definitely one that I would skip.




Technical Specifications:

Starring: Josh Hartnett, Hera Hilmar, Michiel Huisman
Directed by: Joseph Ruben
Written by: Jeff Stockwell
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 AVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 5.1, French, Spanish, Italian DTS 5.1
Studio: Universal
Rated: R
Runtime: 111 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: August 1st, 2017

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• Michael Scott
• May 11, 2017

Recommendation: Skip It

 

[tripplej]

Thanks for the review. I will watch "The Promise" rather than this one. Thanks.