Chokehold is a Turkish thriller-drama film that follows Yalin, and his wife Beyza, who move to a village in Turkey after a scandal. The film is now streaming on Netflix.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Plot summary
Yalin and Beyza have recently moved to village in Turkey but the situation is clearly not normal. A news broadcast reveals that Yalin was a famous businessman in Istanbul.
After being arrested alongside his partners and serving jail term for being part of a Ponzi scheme, he was acquitted by the court and decided to move with his wife.
At an antique store, the shopkeeper starts attacking Yalin after berating him for losing people’s money in the Ponzi scheme. Yalin subdues him and kills him.
Selami, a local police officer, talks to Yalin about Cevdet, the shopkeeper who attacked Yalin earlier. He tells him that Cevdet despises him.
And he isn’t the only one. Numerous individuals such as Cevdet, including Selami himself, spent a fortune investing into the Ponzi scheme. And now they’re all out to kill him for revenge.
Yalin continues to feign ignorance in front of him, claiming not to know Cevdet and being innocent of the scheme as well. Yalin buries Cevdet’s body.
Despite Beyza’ continuous efforts to understand what’s wrong. Yalin tries to tell his lawyer about the murder, but before he can, he tells Yalin to stay out of any trouble, even speeding through yellow traffic lights.
Yalin starts to become mentally unstable. His paranoia of being attacked forces him to practice killing others at his house.
He gets a voice message from Selami stating that the police are looking into Cevdet’s disappearance and will be launching an investigation.
Daim, one of the people in the village who hail him as a genius, advises Yalin not to even contemplate suicide. He says that the people who invested in his scheme were greedy and whatever happens to them is their own fault.
Yalin decides not to give up. He asks his lawyer whether he and Beyza can leave the country or find out who ratted him out. His lawyer shuts down both possibilities and ridiculous.
He gets attacked again by someone who invested in the scheme. Yalin kills him with a chokehold, but loses mental stability and starts shouting that he had a heart attack, running away subsequently.
Chokehold ending explained in detail:
What is Yalin’s plan of escape?
Someone witnesses Yalin burying bodies. Incidentally, they work at a ship. Yalin thinks of it as a good way to escape the land.
He offers to give the captain of the ship his truck if he can get him to the other side of the sea; to Lesbos in Greece.
In the bathroom during a musical, someone tries to shoot Yalin. He is forced to kill them as well. At this point, he is just desperate to escape.
Who ratted out Yalin?
He quickly tells Beyza that they need to escape in the morning on a ship. When she struggles to understand why, he tells her that there have been attempts to kill him.
He shows her a briefcase with one million Euros in cash. Beyza is shocked at this. She reveals that she is the whistleblower, she is the one who ratted him out.
Yalin is unable to believe this. He asks her why she would do something like this. She tells him that the District Attorney thought he was a clean businessman, and she just replied with the truth.
She felt that Yalin was like a scarecrow before moving, and people would flock like crows to him because he had money. She is the only one who stuck by him even when he lost everything. She truly loves him.
Does Yalin survive?
Unable to handle this, Yalin hits her on the head and kills her. Acting like a psychopath, he tells a dying Beyza that she should have just cheated on her. This betrayal is harder to take.
He buries her at night. He gives the people of the village the money that he had. Selami meets him later and tells him jail is a hard place for people like him.
But he states that all those who have disappeared must have moved to Greece, hinting that he has decided to let him and take the money.
He is joined by others from the village, who are all eerily cosy with him. At the end of the day, they were greedy people who just cared about getting their money.
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