Skip to main content
Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
More On:
international crime drama
-
Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Victims’ Game’ Season 2 on Netflix, The Return Of The Taiwanese Mystery Thriller And Its Asperger’s Syndrome Protagonist
-
Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Dom’ Season 3 On Prime Video, The Final Run For This Brazilian Crime Drama And Its Charismatic, Conflicted Thief
-
Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Gangs Of Galicia’ On Netflix, Where A Madrid Lawyer Moves To Galicia To Look Into Her Father’s Secret Life In A Crime Family
-
Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Crooks’ On Netflix, Where An Unlikely Friendship Starts After A Robbery Goes Really Wrong
10 whole days of a bad man? In this economy? Well, if Turkish crime capers are your thing, then Netflix has you covered. After releasing 10 Days of a Good Man earlier in 2023, they’re already back with 10 Days of a Bad Man. Same man, different demeanor.
10 DAYS OF A BAD MAN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Previously on 10 Days of a ___ Man … we meet Sadik (Nejat İşler), an aspiring gumshoe in the mold of Phillip Marlowe. Elliott Gould’s version from The Long Goodbye, that is. (People around him are keen to compare him to Columbo.)
But the difference from 10 Days of a Good Man to 10 Days of a Bad Man becomes obvious quickly from just a music cue. Spaghetti Western-style music indicates that we’re now getting a darker version of Sadik who dwells more in the dark recesses of his own soul. He’s on a mission to repay the debt he owes to a shady Turkish gangland operator. To do so, he takes on a job as a private investigator to solve a murder at a mansion. This brings him into contact with a wide array of seedy characters, all of whom are trying to spin him to obscure their own involvement and push their own agenda.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: 10 Days of a Bad Man straddles the polarities of the two Daniel Craig detective movies, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Knives Out. If that sounds confusing to you … yes.
Performance Worth Watching: Nejat İşler’s Sadik at least holds the movie together, which counts for something.
Memorable Dialogue: “So I ask you now, is the act or the reason for it what matters?” says a character whose name will be omitted because this line summing up the film’s themes comes during the solving of the case. “Righteousness? Good? Evil? They’re all debatable.”
Sex and Skin: Some steamy foreplay near the end, but it remains fully clothed.
Our Take: “It’s a mistake of the genre to think that your detective is your main character,” Rian Johnson observed during the promotion of Glass Onion. “You have to think of him as the detective, not as the central character. The story has to function in terms of the suspects, the murder, and the victim.” 10 Days of a Bad Man makes the mistake. The film wants to be both a character study of Sadik and have him investigate all the other characters. It’s too much, even when spread across multiple installments. This series can’t make its leading man interesting enough to justify pulling focus from the intrigue, which itself is really nothing more than potboiler stuff.
Our Call: SKIP IT. If you’re dead-set on a cinematic Rubik’s cube to untangle, then maybe give 10 Days of a Bad Man a whirl. But this isn’t a serialized detective story worth your investment. At least not when there are 16 whole seasons of Columbo out there for you.
Marshall Shaffer is a New York-based freelance film journalist. In addition to Decider, his work has also appeared on Slashfilm, Slant, The Playlist and many other outlets. Some day soon, everyone will realize how right he is about Spring Breakers.
