Baran (Mert Ramazan Demir) is the abandoned man in Çagri Vila Lostuvali's Abandoned Man/Metruk Adam. As a 14-year-old boy, he was forced to take the blame for his older brother's hit-and-run crime because his father believed he would receive a lighter sentence since he was a minor. When Baran finally comes out of prison, he's no longer a teenager. He's a grown man, his parents are dead, and his older brother, Faith, is married and has a daughter. That little girl is Lidya (Ada Erma), who is used as a sort of wild card by the filmmakers—whenever in doubt, they cut to her for a cute reaction or gesture. Your fondness for her will depend on how much sugar you like in your drink. Lidya has big, gooey eyes with heart-shaped pupils. Her face seems to demand love, care, and attention. Lostuvali uses her for purely sentimental purposes. When she first appears on the screen, the background music mawkishly swells. The whole film (written by Deniz Madanoglu and Murat Uyurkulak), in fact, runs with corny emotions. Abandoned Man is indistinguishable from a soapy TV serial.
The events in the film are all driven by the desire to "move" the audience. Early on, Faith, his wife Arzu (Burcu Cavrar), and their daughter Lidya are involved in a car accident. Arzu dies, Faith falls into a coma, and Lidya begins spending time with Baran. Baran struggles to find a job and has no place to call home. He has a passion for cars and aspires to work as a mechanic, dreaming of opening his own repair shop. Unfortunately, due to his troubled past, no one is willing to hire him, and he cannot afford the high cost of renting a garage. Faced with these challenges, he even considers sending Lidya to a foster home. We get a whole dramatic sequence where Baran drives a car at full speed out of frustration. The movie leads us to believe that Lidya will get separated from Baran. This, however, turns out to be a cheap emotional trigger. Lidya doesn't go anywhere; she continues living with Baran. Abandoned Man is filled with cheap emotional triggers. It sacrifices logic and coherence at the altar of weepy sentiments. For instance, Baran receives an exorbitant hospital bill, which, according to the film, is never paid in full (Baran tries to raise money but falls short of the intended amount). As a result, he shifts Faith to a less expensive hospital. Now, it takes some time for Baran to get a job. He gets a job all right, but long after shifting his brother to another hospital. In the meantime, how did he manage to cover the bill? Did he ask the hospital for an extension? If so, how much time did he request?
At one point in the film, Baran breaks into a house, so that he and Lidya can shower. Couldn't he have gone to his friend's house (his name is Esat)? Esat and Baran both share a passion for cars, yet they never discuss the subject. Even when Baran manages to fix a Mustang, there's no conversation about his approach or methods. We know Baran wants to be a mechanic because the movie tells us so. You could change his profession to, say, a clay pot maker or a construction worker, and the story wouldn't suffer. Why, he could very well be into computers, given how he recovers his brother's notes during the film's opening moments! Abandoned Man, though, is conceived as a narrow-minded tearjerker—and it's a tearjerker only because that label gives the filmmakers an excuse to use manipulative tricks to provoke the desired reaction from the audience. Abandoned Man abandons good taste and judgment, which is why you, too, abandon it as soon as the end credits begin to roll.
Final Score- [1.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
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Publisher at Midgard Times