Toss-Up (2004)

You should watch the beautiful cinematography in historical Cappadocia! Roy Kurtluyan has done a great job as director of photography on this part of the film!

Keep up the good work Roy, we're proud of an Armenian cinematographer's great work in this controversial film!

Yazi Tura has received 11 awards on Golden Orange (Altin Portakal) Film Festival in October 2004. Awards include: Best Film, Best Actor (Olgun Simsek), Best Director (Ugur Yucel), and many more.

Fmovies: I have seen the movie this year. I've been watching the director as an actor for years. The story is very realistic and the cast seems to fit so appropriate. After a while except dramatic editions, the movie transforms to a documentary film and begins to annoy much more. The two parallel sub-stories holds many characters like the cheating friend of Ridvan, the survivor of 1999 earthquake, neglectful father of Cevher, the unwanted gay brother and also the ghostly Kurdish ex-girlfriend of Ridvan. Especially the finals of the two stories makes an ironic expression on the movie title heads or tails"Yazi& Tura".. Each side of the coin is the same.

The film actually has two separate stories, starting from the same scene. First story is about a small town guy who comes back from the military service as a wounded handicapped man. The next story is about his friend who comes back home in the big city after army service. Their before-military dreams are destroyed when they confront realities of life. I liked the first story better because it is very probable and realistic. However, the second story, is not as strong as the first, mainly because of telling a marginal story, (army guy turns into mafia guy, his daddy had a former marriage with a Greek woman, and their son is half Greek half Turkish gay man).. So second story mainly revolves around the psychological conflicts on how come a Turkish commando-mafia guy had a gay Greek half brother.. I wonder how many turks had this same conflict :) This is a typical trap of many Turkish movie makers usually fall.. They focus on a marginal story, and lives of marginal people, and they miss the huge majority of people, and their ordinary lives. The realism in the movie weakens when almost all characters are losers, alcohol and drug abusers. Movie also is loaded with too many things which reduces its believability: terrorist/military conflict, Turkish guy loving a terrorist conflict, painful earthquake, Greek Turkish relations, gay-macho conflicts, substance abuse, mafia, son father conflict, etc .. too many things in one package.. Conclusion: Nice to watch, especially the first story, but it could have been done better..

Toss-Up fmovies. Wonderful.I had never thought this movie could be so sarcastic before I watched it but when it ended I was in a shock like I was well beaten.The movie is about two soldiers got wounded in army one lost his leg and the other became deaf after a mine explosion.After coming back to their cities life would never be the same again for them.They will not be able to adopt their new lives.They will have to live their own tragedies and other people will not understand them.The movie is extraordinary has a very different plot and dramatic story from the beginning to end credits.The reason why I liked it so much is that it is a mile stone for Turkish cinema much more different than other Turkish movies.The movie has a style like requiem for a dream but more sarcastic than that.

It is a brief lesson on our lifes I guess written by Ugur Yücel, and taught through the beautiful acting performances of Turkey's greatest screen figures in a such a great atmosphere(classroom let's say)Real Turkish cinema, real creativity I must say, such a masterpiece that could make me push the all former Hollywood big-shots which are imposed in our minds for ages ,to the other side.(Not that I have a thing about them,I adore American Cinema)A title that any HUMAN BEING must watch. And I can not end my comment without an inquiry about cinema and what people understand from cinema in my country.I, right now, condemn any sort of Turkish illiterated and unthoughtful acts done within this site and much worse indeed, on the streets and at the widely accepted columns of our newspapers in this country and go on to walk on my path to encourage and support those few people who really devote their lifes on this kind of arts-creation.They do not shoot sketches and name it CINEMA, they do not exploit our deepest feeling through out the things our people have been up to, they do not shoot re-makes with old-clowns and a bunch of weird so called actor-comedianish people.They just create...For themselves, and for us,or at least for the ones who just think like us...Thank You Mr. Ugur Yücel... P.S. : I call everyone of you people, to continue watching movies like this,paying attention into them, discussing them in public and buying it's DvDs and stuff...This will be greatest way to support them and raise their value.Both domestically and internationally in every way...Because it is way better than to ORGANIZE PEOPLE TO VOTE THIS MOVIE AND TRY TO MAKE IT TOP 10 OR SOMETHING in this web-site.Those kind of (above-mentioned) contributions will encourage those man to shoot better ones and make our 'values' TOP-TOP-TOP 10 in the big picture.Thank you...

This movie is far away from what we were used to in Turkish cinema. In fact, this picture has no hope whatsoever inside, and that kind of depresses you, besides a huge slap of reality. I think the movie is not made for criticizing anyone or anything, it is made to show how real, ordinary people are situated in our daily life. Contains black humor sometimes, it is dark and so real that it creeps you out. The acting is not even close to bad, actors have really got into their roles. And the directing is, a little new but better than I have expected. This movie is in the 1st rank in my favorite Turkish movies, and i think most of the people who watched it would agree with me