Banksters: Nonbinary and gay actors play a gang of teenage Turkish-German interns turnedn bank robbers.

 

Link to the n*de dudes

I misread the MAX series Banksters (2025) as Banksies, devotees of the gay-positive street artist Banksy.  It's actually "based on a true story" about teenage bank robbers.  But it stars the nonbinary actor Eren M. Güvercin, who played gay characters in Druck (2018) and Eldorado: Everything the Nazis Hate (2023), so he's certainly playing a gay guy here.

Scene 1: Berlin, 2004.  A group of teenagers trade something off.  It finally gets to Yusuf (Eren, top photo) who joins his friend in a car.  Suddenly red dust explodes.

Cut to Yusuf and his little brother (Momo Ramadan, left) doing sit-ups before breakfast.  Brother retrieves a lot of cash from his various toys.  Yusuf puts it in his trunk and drives through Berlin, while listening to news stories about a series of bank robberies.

Momo, not to be confused with the Egyptian singer, looks much older than his character, and gives off a gay vibe.

He visits Baba, probably his father (Numan Acar), in a building being constructed.  Baba is delighted: "I kiss your eyes!"  But when Yusuf tries to give him some cash, he refuses, and advises, "I want you to stop this day trading."

Google AI: Day trading is the buying and selling of securities, such as stocks or options, within the same trading day to profit from small, short-term price movements. 

Scene 2:  An evening soccer game.  Suddenly a Detective arrives, plus a lot of cops in riot gear.  Continuity error: suddenly it's raining.  They wait for Yusuf to make the winning goal, and then arrest him for the bank robberies.

Scene 3: 18 months before the arrest.  Yusuf looks at a bill for 8,100 euros, draws the money out of his bank account, and pays it.  "And pretend that it comes from my father's account: Mohammed Arslan."

The bank clerk finds this suspicious, and calls for the manager to do some research.  Turns out that the 8,100 € is just for the taxes on the real amount due,120,000€!   Couldn't Yusuf still pay for some of it?  Or set up a payment plan?

Scene 4: While Dad is cooking dinner, Yusuf calls his sister into his room, and gives her the dets: Dad has already declared bankruptcy.  Then he was talked into getting a loan, and can't pay it back, and now it's all due!  Yusuf already spent all of his savings on the taxes.

They start to tell Mom, but she rushes right into the kitchen and starts groping and fondling Dad, so they change their minds.

Scene 5: In the present, Yusuf is interrogated by the arresting Detective, who does the Bad Cop routine: "You think you're tough?  You think you're smart?"  

The IMDB only lists three cast members, Eren (Yusuf), Numan (Dad), and Merlin Von Garnier (Malte, not introduced yet). Other sites list Momo Ramadan (the Little Brother), Andreas Pietschmann,  Omid Memar, Michelangelo Fortalezzi, and David Bredin (n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).  I don't know which plays the Detective. 

Yusuf he calls his sister and tells her to retrieve an envelope taped underneath his desk.  It contains a business card: "Call her -- it's my lawyer, Dr. Julia Rieger."  Why would you go through the trouble of hiding her card?  Lots of people have lawyers.  

"Plus bring me some clothes and books, and don't tell Mom and Dad." In the U.S., you must notify the parents when you arrest a minor.

More after the break.. 

Topkapi: A jewel-encrusted daggar, gay subtexts, and technicolor Turkey

In the early 1960s, before Google Maps, if you wanted to see southern Europe, you got on a plane for an expensive, once-in-a-lifetime trip, or you went to the movies.  Dozens of films had plots about glamorous, attractive people (except for an occasional comic relief lout) doing something or other that required them to drive mopeds through quaint hillside villages in Sicily or rush at breakneck speed through the Parthenon, giving viewers a bright technicolor Cook's Tour.  Usually you saw France, Italy, or Greece, but in Topkapi (1964) you got to see Istanbul.

Glamorous jewel thief Elizabeth Lipp (Melina Mercouri) invites us to tour the  Topkapi, the palace complex of the Ottomans during the height of their empire, now open to the public.  Many tourists are drawn to the Treasury, with its displays of Turkish opulence, especially the emerald encrusted daggar of Sultan Mahmud (1730-54).  It was actually crafted as a gift for Nadir Shah of Iran, but never delivered, but she tells us that it was a gift from his lover. And she plans to steal it.

The caper requires her to assemble a band of experts:

1. The dashing, cosmopolitan Walter (Maximilian Schell, right)

2. Mechanics expert Cedric (Robert Morley)

3. Acrobat Giulio (Gilles Segal, left)

4. Muscle Hans (Jesse Hahn)

5. Stooge Arthur (Peter Ustinov), who will take the fall for them.

Beefcake: Hundreds of shirtless hunks engaging in Turkish oil wrestling.

Hans, Giulio, and Walter all have their shirts off (Giulio is ripped!).

Buddy bonding: Walter and Giulio (they definitely look like they are going to kiss), Arthur and a burly Greek cook (Akim Tamiroff) who becomes his confidant:

Cook;  You foreign, no?
Arthur:  No, I'm English.
Cook: (Puts his arm around him).  Everybody out there -- Russian spies.  I kill.  I get medal.
Arthur: (Suspecting that he is a spy.) Are you here officially?
Cook: Fishily?  No, I give  English friend good meat.
Arthur:  Good meat, I understand.  (Cook kisses him.)  Well, I thought I understood.

There are complications, some humorous, some suspenseful, and of course they don't get away with it.  But not to worry, they are soon out of prison and on their way to a new caper: stealing  the crown jewels in the Kremlin!

No sex, no romance, no violence,some buddy-bonding, lots of oiled-up Turkish guys, and location shots in Greece and Istanbul.

Not a bad way to spend two hours.