This humorous crime drama still enjoys cult status in Turkey today, and “Eskiya” or “Bandit” was one of the most watched domestic films in Turkish cinemas in the 1990s. It is not one of those typical Turkish art films that usually arrive on the repertoire of world film festivals, but “The Bandit” is a classic genre work shot more in the footsteps of Hollywood. Of course, this should not be taken literally, because the renowned Turkish filmmaker Yavuz Turgul managed to solidly mix realistic elements from Turkish everyday life from the end of the 1990s with a rather fairy-tale plot. The bandit from the title of the film is Baran (Sener San), a former bandit from a mountainous area somewhere in the east of Turkey who was released from prison after 35 years.
Clearly, in those 35 years, everything has completely changed, and when he gets to where his village once was, he will realize that the village is no more because it has been flooded in the meantime and turned into an accumulation lake. His fiancée Kaja is not there either, and he will find out that his love was kidnapped by Berfo (Kamuran Usluer), his former best friend who actually betrayed him and put him in jail to steal his girlfriend. Along with Kaje, Berfo stole Barana’s gold, which he provided in robbery campaigns, and when he finds out that Barfo could be in Istanbul, this old man who seems to have fallen from another planet, will head to the Turkish capital.
Baran will go to Istanbul for revenge and a wife, but along the way he will make friends with the petty Istanbul thief Cumal (Ugur Yucel), who himself has a lot of problems, primarily with much more serious and dangerous criminals. But they will somehow help each other solve the problem, and it turns out that Berfo, thanks to Baran’s gold as the initial capital, has meanwhile become one of the richest Turks. There is also something Daddy’s, naive, in “Bandit”, and the main dynamics of the film are based on complete contrasts between the two main characters. It is a film that also plays on the contrasts between villages and metropolises such as Istanbul, which emphasizes the generation gap further exacerbated by the fact that Baran spent 35 years in prison, during which time the world changed completely.
Although “Bandit” may be a film that has no special artistic value, it is definitely an interesting, at times witty and likable humanistic story with which we can get to know two different Turkey. A modern one impersonated in the character of a young Cumal, an urban type adult on the streets of Istanbul with a developed street intelligence, a petty deceiver and a scoundrel in whom a big heart still hides. The other Turkey, the old, conservative, rural, primitive and even backward in some other times of blood feuds, tribal customs and traditions is personified by the old bandit Baran. A guy who simply doesn’t belong today and who can’t manage in a modern metropolis, so “The Bandit” can be seen as a somewhat sentimental story about the collision of two different worlds that have something in common at first, but can’t really be more different. .