Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Chokehold’ on Netflix, a Compelling Turkish Thriller About a Bad Man Coping, Poorly, With His Moral Corruption

Chokehold (now on Netflix) strikes me as a wishful-thinking revenge-fantasy thriller of sorts, a story told from the perspective of a nationally infamous sleazebag and asking us not to sympathize with him and his redemption story, but rather, stand in his shoes as he suffers. The primary question in regards to this oddly engrossing Turkish film – from director Onur Saylak – is whether the guy’s going to reconsider his moral corruption or just continue to make putrid decisions as he endures a scenario that rapidly escalates his maddening paranoia. 

CHOKEHOLD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Yalin (Kivanc Tatlitug) seems to have a… burden. A lot on his mind. He’s not much of a, shall we say, smiler. He wears a thick handlebar mustache that only accentuates his permafrown. He and his wife Beyza (Funda Eryigit) arrive at a somewhat immodest estate in lovely Assos, on the Aegean coast of Turkey. They need the peace and quiet the country promises – Istanbul gave Beyza such a headache, she moans. Yalin heads into the local sleepy town to pick up some groceries and the shopkeep is rude to him. Tells him the store is closed. Basically kicks him out. Curious. Yalin doesn’t seem surprised by this. He drives home. Beyza, she just wants to watch garbage TV. She turns it on with perfect timing: A news report. About Yalin. He just got out of jail for an embezzlement scandal. He pocketed $100 million as the proprietor of a sham investment company. It’s the type of scam that bankrupts retirees and leaves average folk so destitute, some end up dead by suicide. And now, Yalin is the most hated man in Turkey.

Beyza shuts off the TV. “We are still alive. Life goes on,” she says, climbing in his lap, distracting him. I wonder what Tammy Wynette would have to say about Beyza’s loyalty. They have dinner plans later, and Beyza would like to bring the host a gift, so Yalin ventures down the road to an antique shop. “Antique shop” – it’s mostly junk on shelves, but, whatever. This shopkeep is more aggressive than the last one, though. At first, he’s only subtly verbally hostile toward Yalin, but he eventually builds to the point where he jumps on Yalin’s back and tries to choke him to death with a macrame wall decoration. He must’ve lost his little cash stash in the scheme, it seems. They wrestle around and there’s some biting and a close shave with a broken pottery shard and just as they’re both dazed and taking a bit of a breather Yalin grabs a stone bust of Aristotle and smashes the guy’s head in. 

Yalin R-U-N-N-O-F-Ts in his SUV, but then he stops. Turns around. Doublechecks. Yep. Guy’s dead. Finito. He looks around. Rolls the body up in a rug and takes it up into the hills and drags it to a remote spot and dumps it in a hole. It’s way after dark when he gets home looking like a bedraggled mongoose, so he beelines to the shower. “What took you so long?” Beyza asks. He doesn’t answer. The next day, Beyza’s friend takes them to a vineyard for a leisurely country stroll and you start to wonder how they even have friends after all this; they all must be fellow rich people who have all manner of warped justifications for grotesque greed, and therefore accept Yalin for the human pustule he is. After all, Beyza’s friend isn’t showing them a vineyard because it’s a lovely place for a walk; she wants to buy her own vineyard, but hopefully one without a bunch of bugs all over it, ew!

Anyway, after the walk, a cop finds Yalin and pulls him aside and explains to the audience how Yalin got off with only 10 days in jail because he cooperated with the DA and turned in all his business partners – business partners who’ve put a price on his head and found no shortage of amateur bounty hunters who want to take them up on the offer, since they’re all broke now thanks to Yalin’s scam. Then the cop explains to Yalin how the local authorities are fully prepared to look the other way as all this is going on, and oh, by the way, any chance Yalin knows anything about the guy from the antique shop? Oh shit.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Chokehold seems to be inspired by gritty Scott Cooper realism (think Out of the Furnace) with some greed-is-good thematic fodder (Wall Street) except bleakly ironic like the Coen Bros. (a little Fargo folly or No Country for Old Men pessimism) and with a slight hint of Dark Sam Raimi (A Simple Plan). 

Performance Worth Watching: Eryegit shows some subtle complexity in a character who’s kind of stuck in the middle with this guy; it’s a little hard to tell where she stands re: her complicity with Yalin’s misdeeds. 

Memorable Dialogue: One of Yalin’s well-moneyed friends sniffs a little powder and delivers a Gekkoesque speech to our protagonist, an excerpt from which goes like so: “Is something bothering you? Is it because you are worried about… I mean, some guy goes broke and shot himself in the head. 

Sex and Skin: A facial-closeup sex scene in which we see nothing but lips smooshing.

Our Take: Chokehold would be one of those highly frustrating, how-deep-in-the-shit-is-he-gonna-get psycho-thrillers if our protagonist wasn’t such an amoral slime mold. He starts out as a brooding depressive prompting us to feel neither this way or that about him. But, without giving too much away, we come to the conclusion that he’s perhaps irredeemable after the antique-shop incident, during which the more reasonable among us, if we were in Yalin’s shoes, might’ve called the cops and lied and said we accidentally killed the guy in self-defense. But Yalin’s first instinct is to bury the body and keep a festering secret, and we all know what it means to hold things in. The wise, wise words of my college biology prof come to mind: “To deny the urge is to invite constipation.”

But! It’s more complex than that. Yalin’s second instinct is to call his lawyer and confess, but they guy cuts him off and says that Yalin can’t even run a yellow light without potentially jeopardizing the indictments of the other parties in the financial scam. So: Manipulating the legal system got him where he is today, in all facets of the phrase. A corrupt society with a corrupt sense of justice breeds corrupt people. That’s about as far as the film follows that idea, though; it’s not particularly realistic to expect it to offer a megasolution to a megaproblem, is it? It doesn’t begin or end with Yalin, not in the least. So we watch with morbid fascination as Yalin slowly sinks into the quicksand of his own vile decisions – and into hallucinatory madness.

The plot thicks methodically and suspensefully, and if we’re not always riveted to our seats – the closest thing to a legit emotion you’re likely to experience is schadenfreude – we’re at least moderately absorbed. It leads to a couple of occurrences that lightly assault our suspension of disbelief, and a third-act that delivers a blow to the solar plexus and a potentially incomprehensible final sequence that’s slightly too calculated to be provocative to actually be provocative. But puzzling over such a moment is always preferable over shrugging at it and going on with your day.

Our Call: STREAM IT. White-collar sociopath slides down slippery moral slope from indirect, psychological violence to good old-fashioned physical violence: Chokehold is ambitious enough to inspire our fascination for nearly two hours.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.