By Simon Thompson
Writer/ director Can Evernol’s Sayara is a visceral, no holds barred, good old fashioned throwback revenge flick, with a body count to match. Sayara takes on the style and tone of the classic revenge movies of the 1970s such as The Outlaw Josey Wales, Mad Max, Lady Snowblood, Coffy, and Rolling Thunder but pairs them with a cutting style reminiscent of Kill Bill or the John Wick movies. As a result, the end product is an absolute assault on the senses due to both the graphic violence depicted on screen and the sheer skill of Evernrol’s direction.
The plot of the movie follows Sayara (Duygu Kocabıyık), a mild-mannered and quiet Turkmen immigrant gym cleaner now living in Turkey with her sister and mother. When her sister Yonca (Özgül Koşar) is horrifically murdered and assaulted by the gym owner Baris (Emre Kizilimark) after a dispute around an affair that the two of them are engaged in despite Baris being a married man, Sayara decides to take matters into her own hands and put everything that her father, a former Turkmen special forces commando and Sambo champion, to use.
The problem however, is that Baris is no ordinary gym owner but the son of a rich and extraordinarily well connected Turkish politician, complicating Sayara’s approach to her mission of revenge.
Evernol’s claustrophobic directing style and heavy use of close ups, allows the audience to appreciate the sheer brutality of the action sequences, in contrast to a classic 90s Jet Li movie, for example, this a down and dirty style of action rather than an awesome display of sheer punching and kicking. The deaths shown in this film, while of course exaggerated for cinematic effect, are as gruesome as anything that I’ve seen in the last few years and I like to think that I have a strong stomach -which Sayara tested to the limit.
The cinematography by Umut Turan, is a neat mixture between naturalistic, which is the style that he uses during the start, but as the narrative unwinds it becomes much more expressive and almost like a comic book with the feel of Frank Miller or the Manga series Shamo. Turan utilises a dark and washed colour palette which compliments the overall tone and action of the movie nicely.
Duygu Kocabıyık’s performance as Sayara is excellent, with Kocabıyık being able to go from shy and retiring to a sheer force of nature at the drop of a hat. The supporting cast isn’t terrible however, but they do get lost a little bit because of both Kocabıyık’s performance but also some pretty flat characterisation when it comes to most of the villains around Baris.
To conclude, if you enjoy movies like Sisu and are looking for something else that scratches that itch, you could do a hell of a lot worse than Sayara. While it doesn’t quite reach the heights of the classic revenge movies that it’s paying homage to, it’s a bold, challenging, and risk-taking piece of work and if that isn’t something to be commended then I don’t know what is.
Sayara screened as part of Grimmfest 2024.
Bloody Flicks 