Last Call for Istanbul sees two strangers spend a night full of passion and romance after a chance meeting at an airport. The film is available to stream on Netflix.
Story
A man and a woman, both from Turkey, meet by chance at the baggage reclaim area of the airport in New York. The woman’s bag gets swapped by someone else’s and the man insists on helping her.
The two eventually stay at a hotel until she meets the man who has her bag. The two later meet on the rooftop of the hotel and share each other’s stories.
The sparks between them fly and the two eventually go and explore the night away in Manhattan. They also have a series of adventures and misadventures and the night ends with the two sleeping with each other.
It’s then revealed that they’re not strangers to each other and they didn’t meet by chance.
They’re Mehmet and Serin, a married couple on the brink of divorce, who decided to roleplay as strangers meeting for the first time, to see if they can find love and fall for each other for the first time again, in a bid to save their marriage.
Both agree they did, but Serin thinks the issues in their marriage are still unresolved. Mehmet heads off to Istanbul, leaving a letter for her apologizing for his mistakes and confessing his love.
She ultimately makes a decision about her life and marriage that could change their lives thenceforth, as Last Call for Istanbul rolls the credits.
Performances
Kivanç Tatlitug plays Mehmet quite nicely, and his love, frustrations, anger, insecurities, and jealousy are all very visible and clear, thanks to Tatlitug’s commendable hold of the performance.
Beren Saat plays Serin and her pain, love, and longing are all portrayed with a performance that’s strong on all fronts.
Saat and Tatlitug commit to their characters and only elevate the material they’re given with their performances and onscreen chemistry, as well as they can.
Positives
The leads are absolutely charming and very easy to look at. Their good performances are added bonus.
It’s a swift affair, and when the film is this uneventful and boring, it’s a blessing for the runtime to be short, which is the case here.
The twist is good and it’s not exactly something everyone would be able to anticipate right off the bat. It comes as a nice surprise even if not a pleasant one.
Negatives
Last Call for Istanbul has two magnetic, beautiful, and talented actors playing the leads, and although they share such good on-screen chemistry, they’re not really given anything worthwhile or compelling to take advantage of that chemistry.
The sexy, steamy scenes are not executed with any sort of finesse that fits those labels. The orgasm scene comes across as silly and the sex scene is frustratingly bad.
There’s not enough time for anything compelling to be explored or contemplated, with neither the drama of the relationship nor the romance therein getting any sort of justifiable time to properly develop.
Verdict
Last Call for Istanbul has an interesting enough premise to work but the lousy efforts across all the departments in the filmmaking process end up making the film a slog whose only redemptive feature is its swift runtime.
Last Call for Istanbul
Director: Gonenc Uyanik
Date Created: 2023-11-24 13:30
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Also Read: Last Call for Istanbul summary and ending explained