Superstar Ayhan Isik was a dominant force in Turkish cinema of the 1950’s and 1960’s, so his seemingly endless filmography was bound to feature several noirs, including Memduh Ün’s late-cycle Death Stalks Us (1960) and Before the Law (1964). Many years earlier, however, Isik played an ordinary electrician named Kemal in Lütfi Akad’s Katil (US: The Killer), a prison break fugitive tale whose noir tropes go all the way back to Lang’s You Only Live Once (1937). Combining crime and adventure with a generous helping of melodrama (it’s Turkish after all), The Killer follows the hellish journey of a simple family man as he’s framed and convicted for murder, breaks out of prison in the Turkish countryside, and evades an extended, nationwide police manhunt. Akad maintains a brisk pace and dynamic camera work as Kemal, animated by rage and vengeance, navigates his way through police fire and highway checkpoints to get home to reunite with his young son and finger the real criminals, which may include his duplicitous wife. While Isik’s handsome face maintains a steadfast calm, the film expresses the fugitive’s inner turmoil in the form of his chaotic journey, which involves stealing rides from trains, trucks, and vans. And of course, standard for Turkish films of this period, the crude music editing swells abruptly and aggressively whenever the emotional temperature rises in the slightest.