40
Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl
This movie's got everything except gravity or a sense of emotional coherence.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
25
A limp and lifeless historical melodrama that aspires to be the “Pearl Harbor” of the preamble to World War I and still falls well short of that ignoble goal, Joseph Ruben’s The Ottoman Lieutenant tries to snatch a love triangle from out beneath the Armenian Genocide but fails to get any of the angles right.
30
Though the film ultimately hinges on a “forbidden” Muslim-Christian romance, almost nothing is made of the enormous hurdles that would be present in this time and place.
40
Los Angeles Times by Gary Goldstein
This well-intentioned, sumptuously shot tale of love and war, directed by Joseph Ruben, lacks the emotional depth and romantic grandeur to fulfill its epic ambitions.
25
Slant Magazine by Keith Watson
More conspicuous than its rote melodrama is the way the film elides the concurrent genocide of ethnic Armenians by Ottoman forces.
20
Austin Chronicle by Marjorie Baumgarten
Ultimately, this is a movie that’s more about the Ottoman Lieutenant’s Woman than The Ottoman Lieutenant himself – another example of the film’s epic misdirection.
30
The New York Times by Neil Genzlinger
The Ottoman Lieutenant is an overwrought nurse romance merged with a history lesson, a combination that is hard to take as seriously as the film wants to be taken.
38
What we’re left with is a botched romance saddled with an over-arching, over-reaching message, one that only the Turks will be quick to embrace.
40
The Hollywood Reporter by Sheri Linden
The by-the-numbers story never achieves its aimed-for grandeur or intensity, and the striking Turkish locations prove far more interesting than the characters.
37
Washington Post by Stephanie Merry
Morality is hardly the main concern of The Ottoman Lieutenant. Instead, it’s content with hackneyed romance and soaring strings.