Have you ever been in a Turkish prison?

Classic 80s pop anthem "Together in Electric Dreams" featuring the Human League's Phil Oakey; that wonderful "dugga-dugga" sound on Donna Summer's "I Feel Love", which topped the British charts the day I was born; and "The Chase" from the film MIDNIGHT EXPRESS played at a loud volume in my friend's car (repeatedly).

That brief but quite impressive resume is a summary of all of Giorgio Moroder's achievements that I'm familiar with. With two of them being film related you may be expecting some kind of salute to the abilities of the electronic wizard himself but alas you'd be wrong.

Nope, I'm going talk about something else instead but I needed somewhere to start - for which reason I refer you to the last item on that list. I'm rather fond of that piece of music from Moroder's score to Alan Parker's Turkish-set thriller (and indeed the rest of Moroder's score) but I'd never actually seen the film. However, having been repeatedly reminded by a couple of colleagues of mine that it's a great film, I was finally forced to do something about the situation and I watched it last night.

Brief recap for those who haven't seen it - American man named Billy (Brad Davis) decides to smuggle hash out of Turkey, gets caught, and spends the rest of the film discovering what we already know - Turkish prisons are really nasty.

You'll note that I didn't say he was tricked into smuggling the drugs. Nor did I say that, as per some second-rate TV movie, he was smuggling it because he desperately needed the money for a lifesaving operation for a terminally ill relative. Nope, he just decides off his own back that he's going to try smuggling drugs out of Turkey. Duh.

And therein lies the big problem I have with the film. The man is trying to smuggle a couple of kilos of drugs. He's a criminal. Ergo, he should be in jail and therefore it's not too upsetting to me when that's exactly what happens.

He claims that he's not a pusher because he was "only" going to sell it to his friends; he claims that he's not a smuggler because he's "only" trying to smuggle two kilos. Dress it up any way you like, he's a drug smuggler.

Now I accept that part of this will be because I'm a square or whatever and don't do drugs, and don't appreciate people smuggling them in for anyone else either. But regardless of personal moral standards, smuggling drugs is illegal and this guy belongs in jail.

The fact that the film opens with one of those "based on a true story" tags that immediately make you doubt everything you're about to see and Parker's repeated attempts to portray the character of Billy as a sympathetic one means there's only one way the film's going to end, but along the way we're supposed to be outraged at the horrors of the Turkish jail.

Horrific it is but, with the odd exception, the majority of really nasty things actually happen to other people rather than Billy - his cellmates, some local kids, a cat - which really doesn't help make me feel he's as hard done by as we are supposed to think. In truth the most sorry I felt for anyone was for a guy named Rifki when Davis and cellmate John Hurt decide to humiliate him in an act of revenge. However, the fact that he's one of the "bad guys" suggests that either Parker's gone wrong somewhere or else I have.

It's not that it's a bad film - it's a reasonable thriller and there is some tension waiting to see exactly what is going to happen to Billy, but for me it was hampered by the aformentioned moral dilema. The opening sequence for example, in which Billy attempts to get his drugs past the officials at the airport, did have me on the edge of my seat - but only for a few minutes until suddenly I just thought wait a minute, he's trying to smuggle drugs, he deserves to be caught. And it's that which proves to be the stumbling block for me.

Or maybe the way I had the film built up beforehand just made me subconciously want to dislike it before I'd even seen it. I think in movie terms that's known as Waterworld Syndrome.

Whatever. It's still got great music.