Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

Chiko (2009)

Director: Özgür Yildirim

3
Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

Impressive directorial skills, if a trite plotline, are on offer in Turkish-German writer-director Özgür Yildirim’s occasionally violent debut feature from from Fatih Akin’s production company Corazón. Denis Moschitto makes for a charismatic, watchable  and surprisingly sympathetic presence  as Chiko, a young Hamburg hoodlum and drug-dealer coping with his physically and emotionally volatile friend and business partner Tibet (Volkan Özcan), his separated family and the demands of bigshot Brownie (Moritz Bleibtreu) – into whose empire the young Turk aggressively inveigles himself.

The narrative hanger is a clichéd immigrant rags-to-riches tale replete with standard-issue accoutrements – from the hero’s uncriticised materialist ambitions to his romanticised relationship with an attractive prostitute (Reyhan Sahin).

But the story is dressed in divertingly realist clothing, ranging from cinematographer Matthias Bolliger’s accurate rendering of the film’s Turkish-immigrant milieu to the mainly laudable attempt of the script (inspired by gangster  Jacques Mesrine’s autobiography  ‘Instinct of Death’) to render the contradictory pulls of individualism and familial and fraternal loyalty in psychologically credible terms, and the committed performances of the cast.

Author: Wally Hammond 2009-08-18 13:30:32

Time Out London issue 2035, 20-26 August 2009

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Chiko

Cast & crew

Director: Özgür Yildirim

Producer: Fatih Akin

Cast: Denis Moschitto, Moritz Bleibtreu, Volkan Dezcan

Duration: 92 mins


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.