Art of Love

If you can make it through the first-half of Art of Love, which is asking more of the audience than any movie has a right to do, there is some fun to be had in the film's final 40 minutes of this story about an Interpol agent (Esra Bilgiç) attempting to prove her millionaire ex-boyfriend (Birkan Sokullu) is a world-renown thief. The film struggles heavily before getting to our thief's last big score which will shift the focus of the film from the awkward cat-and-mouse game the two are playing and finally push both characters, each of whom has lied about their present motives, together into admitting their feelings.

The goofy setup, packed to the gills with supporting characters who are little more than walking cliches, teases us with the truth of their romantic failure while there are obviously still feelings between them, is the stuff of bad soap opera. Likewise, the film's early scenes, including the first two heists, are both cheap and quite lackluster.

Only when Alin, who has rekindled their romance for the goal of arresting the man who remains the love of her life, finds herself at an emotional impasse, coincidentally the same time the film's locales and action noticeably both pick up, does the film begin to get interesting. Well, tolerable may be a better word.

Despite how well both stars clean up when dressed to the nines, that's not enough to save the film that suffers from some lazy setup, several underutilized characters (like what happens to our super-hacker who just disappears?), and some dismal early scenes featuring Alin's interactions with her boss. Even for fans of heist films, which I am certainly one, Art of Love isn't likely to steal your heart.

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• Title: Art of Love
• IMDb: link