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Critics Consensus: The Promise wastes an outstanding cast and powerful real-life story on a love triangle that frustratingly fails to engage.
Critic Consensus: The Promise wastes an outstanding cast and powerful real-life story on a love triangle that frustratingly fails to engage.
All Critics (152) | Top Critics (29) | Fresh (75) | Rotten (77)
Terry George ... proved with Hotel Rwanda that he can tackle the wrenching subject of genocide with thrilling cinematic results. A wonderful cast adds no-fail polish.
A sprawling, '60s-style epic with just enough political intrigue to prop up the occasionally wobbly romantic triangle formed by Oscar Isaac, Charlotte Le Bon, and an uncharacteristically ill-fitting Christian Bale.
You have to swallow some inadequacies to get the most out of The Promise. It is appealingly photographed and boasts some stunning location work, yet it's also saddled with the tone of a biblical epic, invisibly watermarked with the label important.
The Promise is drenched in production value and replete with ravishing shots of sunrises and sunsets, but it's in the scenes of fleeing, of battle, and of horrendous loss that the film is at its most effective.
Despite its flaws, it's important that it was made.
Director Terry George delivers a scalding dramatization of the Ottoman Empire's 1915 genocidal annihilation of its Armenian citizens, and then dulls it with a soapy, invented love triangle.
While quite epic in scope, The Promise never reaches such lofty heights, faltering between a passionate love story, which often fails to engage on an emotional level, and a historical narrative.
The Promise doesn't quite reach the heights to which it aspires. That said, it's still a good and extremely well-intentioned film, one whose message is resonant and well worth being heard despite a few imperfections in the delivery.
It pays lip service to actual suffering and clearly displays the jagged editing scars of something much more uncompromising. But. But. I still admired it.
Its lack of focus and momentum is detrimental to the pacing, tone, and to the emotional connection with the characters.
It never quite makes clear to what promise they're referring, but the flaws can be forgiven for the ambition of the story.
Those interested in an often-overlooked piece of history, and the resilience of the people who acted against it, will find The Promise to be engaging.
"The Promise" tells an important story. The acting and costumes are reasonably good, but it seems as if it might have been a bit watered-down -- almost like a Hallmark presentation of the Armenian genocide. It's good, but it could have been a lot better.
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