Bad Blood on The Big Screen

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The movie high jinks of a Turkish Rambo who single-handedly takes on U.S. forces in lawless northern Iraq are filling cinemas across Turkey, America's only predominantly Muslim nato ally. Valley of the Wolves Iraq, which is set to break Turkish box-office records, shows U.S. soldiers in Iraq as they raid a wedding, machine-gun the guests, and take survivors to a prison where a Jewish doctor removes their organs for rich people in the West. Subtle it ain't, but Turks are in a frenzy over it. Advance tickets sold out weeks ago; cabinet ministers, businessmen and even the Prime Minister's wife and daughters packed the glitzy premiere in the capital Ankara.

Turkey and the U.S. are traditional allies, but relations have been tricky since the onset of the Iraq war, when Turkish M.P.s refused to allow U.S. troops to use Turkey to launch their invasion. Anti-American sentiment has been on the rise since then. A 2005 Pew Research Center survey found that just 23% of Turks had a favorable image of the US, down from 52% in 2000.

Valley of the Wolves Iraq opens with a real-life incident. In July 2003, 11 Turkish commandos were detained by U.S. troops in the Iraqi city of Sulaymaniyah. Pictures showing the detained men cuffed and with sacks over their heads provoked outrage in Turkey, where nationalist sentiment runs deep. The film proceeds to pile on fiction. Turkish intelligence officer Polat Alemdar heads to north Iraq to seek out the U.S. troops responsible and avenge Turkish honor. There he discovers a rogue unit of U.S. soldiers led by officer Sam William Marshall, played by Billy Zane. After much blood-letting, Alemdar and his men bond with Iraqis and eventually end American atrocities there, killing Zane in the final scene. "I was fascinated by a compelling character who gave a platform to a controversial point of view that rarely gets a forum," Zane told Time.

The film is also due to open in more than a dozen other countries — including the United States, Germany and Britain. "We believe the film will do well worldwide," says scriptwriter Bahadir Ozdener. "It takes a stand against the invasion of Iraq, and it's not just Turks who think that was wrong." So far, however, U.S. representatives seem unfazed by the hoopla. "It's entertainment," a U.S. official in Ankara told Time. "The U.S. and Turkey have a partnership that is as strong as it always has been."