Summary
Those who stick around until the end will be rewarded for their endurance, yet this emotionally manipulative drama doesn’t deserve any of your precious time.
The term Oscar bait has come to mean movies that specifically and shamelessly use emotionally triggering subject matter in a manipulative way to help amass shiny, gold awards (think The King’s Speech and The Danish Girl, for example). The formula works best if a film targets a certain tragedy, in-vogue disease, or disability. Throw in some prestigious talent, and you will be a winner.
Godspeed will most definitely not be winning anything come award season, but it follows a similar mentality, cramming a film full of sentimentality and misfortune in the hopes of creating something memorable. That fine line between engagement and manipulation is a tough balance to strike, with the Turkish drama highlighting just how tricky it can be. This is, after all, sentimental drivel that only just about saves itself from obscurity with a compelling end.
Godspeed follows Captain Salih, a war veteran with a prosthetic leg, who finds most things in his everyday life prompt in-depth, clunky flashbacks to those traumatic times he’d sooner forget. Even a child playing hopscotch brings on the soldier’s haunting PTSD. He’s clearly a man on the edge, as the opening scene introduces us to the Captain as he robs a house, stealing money and a gun.
Comical sidekick Kerim, his lieutenant and supportive friend, is also along for the ride, with both soldiers journeying across the country with the objective of breaking off a wedding. Kerim’s soul mate Elif is being forced into wedlock and the marriage must be stopped. They drive Turkey’s picturesque highways in a vintage car making small talk and indulging in further robberies, heading towards this momentous showdown.
It is part road trip flick, part war movie, and part rom-com, with splashes of political and social observations thrown in for good measure. A film that only matches its poor acting with inept writing, all the while aiming for poignancy in nearly all its scenes and failing every time.
Take, for example, the car they are driving in, Salih confesses, is the very same vehicle that his entire family died in, or a partridge that the disgraced captain steals from a convenience store is later shot dead when Salih finally frees the bird. The film is plagued with these forced and false emotional ploys, which just don’t work. Godspeed continually undermines its audience at every turn, expecting them to swoon over this sickly sweet melodrama, but they should expect more from their viewership.
Whilst on the road, we explore the soldiers’ troubled pasts via conveniently placed flashbacks, Salih’s wife, Duygu, tries to track the fugitives down, and the wanted duo bumps into an array of unusual characters. It’s a fast-moving piece that manages to keep you mostly entertained throughout, as we hurtle towards a surprising final third. Here, the film defies all expectations and delivers the most shocking of plot twists.
This revelation is discussed in my ending explained article, but believe me, it almost saves the film from all its previous sins.
Netflix’s offering is a corny and contrived affair. The filmmakers blatantly throw everything but the kitchen sink at this tragedy in the hopes of eliciting some kind of emotional response from its tired viewers. It’s manipulative drama at its worst. A clever twist almost justifies the horrors that preceded it, yet they cannot be ignored. Watch at your own peril.
