The Promise
|
List Price: Our Price: $17.99 You Save: $1.99 (10%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $6.00 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of The Promise
Movie Review: Terrible
Summary: 1 Stars
This was an awful movie. I kept waiting for it to get better and then the credits started to roll. I was hoping for something along the lines of "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" or "House of Flying Daggers" but this movie does not even compare. Instead it comes off as a cheap knock off of one of these great Chinese movies.
The worst part about this movie is the visual effects. It tries to emulate the effects of the two movies I listed above, but it looks like it was done on a $5 budget, making it nearly unwatchable. I am ashamed that I sat through this movie when I could have spent my time doing something that I would have enjoyed more, like giving the cat a bath.
Movie Review: Beautiful nonsense
Summary: 1 Stars
I happened to catch this movie shortly after it was released in China, meaning this review is on the original uncut theatrical version. I'll tell you right now, it doesn't matter which version you're watching because it is still nonsense either way. Especially if you're from China, you probably already know how incredibly bad this movie was received. This is supposed to be a fantasy, and you're not really supposed to question what happens in fantasies. But many of the things in this movie were so illogical and unbelievable it makes me wonder if Chen Kaige even watched it himself. It seems like he was so excited with all the ideas he came up with that he had no idea how to organize anything. This movie was a critical failure and a national joke in China, and it's easy to see why.
Read any summary of The Promise and you'll most likely come across something along the lines of this: a cursed princess who's the center of attraction of three different men and the fates that await them. Sounds engaging, right? Unfortunately, the movie hardly ever explores this idea any further than what I've just said. It plods along through a series of flying colors, generic action sequences, ridiculously awful dialogue (especially if you know Mandarin), overdone yet bland special effects, and a story almost completely devoid of logic and all things reasonable. The fact this movie in its current form is the final product is absolutely unbelievable. Asian directors nowadays think they can just thrust famous actors into a colorful world and expect Hollywood to be impressed.
I won't give away spoilers, but the story itself is too disjointed to say anything and virtually every scene is so sensationalized that you could care less what is happening to the people in them. In fact, the cast are not even people to really care about, but rather just an assembly of characters and nothing more. There is no meaningful connection to them because the movie never makes up its mind what it wants to talk about. New situations arise, expect you to be concerned, only to end up undeveloped or forgotten. Scenes make no sense in relation to the ones that preceded them and so forth. It's difficult to provide examples without explaining exact details from the movie, but a lot of the characters' actions were just so utterly mind-boggling, flip-flopping feelings and emotions were unconvincingly bad and laughable.
A lot of people raved at how "beautiful" the movie was, even though a majority of it looked like it was done on someone's home computer. There are video games, television shows and commercials that had far better results than this. When nobody was trying to kill each other with plastic toys as weapons, they were being modeled in blatantly horrendous CGI fakery. The musical score was far too bombastic for its own good in an attempt to somehow generate a response from viewers but was totally out of place. Some scenes were displayed only to show off special effects or action (like what was that giant circular cage doing in the middle of nowhere?). Also, the Mandarin spoken in this movie was absolutely dreadful. This is what happens when you take any of Asia's hottest stars, dress them up in costumes and try to pass it off as a new movie.
I can't believe how much money was spent on this garbage, and it's hard to believe the number of people who gave this their approval. Apparently, you're supposed to let yourself go because it's a fairy tale. Sorry, but even fairy tales are supposed to make sense. In this movie, Chen Kaige made the characters do things that would have made little sense in anyone's culture or language. Even if all the terrible technical issues of the movie were resolved, it still would not have made much of a difference due to an inane story that is confused upon itself. Once you look past all the extravagance, what you get a series of events that try to come together and convey certain themes, but ends up a complete mess. I'm guessing people only liked watching the moving pictures because I can't think of any other reason to like this movie.
Movie Review: not a typical Chinese movie
Summary: 2 Stars
So in my opnion, this movie really suck. It's not a typical Chinese movie actually, it's made for Hollywood.
There is another version of this movie, someone cut all the nonsense scene from this movie and made a nonsense story. That one is funny.
Movie Review: Broken Promise
Summary: 2 Stars
This film was a complete disappointment. I have been a fan of Chinese films for years ( both mainland and Hong Kong) and there are certain things that I've come to expect: 1. An original concept or original approach to a popular concept, 2. Atleast an attempt at moving performances ( You ever notice how,even in cheesy exploitatative Hong Kong pictures, the actors seem to be taking there performances and the material very seriously?) and 3. Tight, clever, and well executed action sequences. In this film you get none of those things. The concept is weak, the acting is tired (with the exception of Hiroyuki Sanada as The General), and the fight scenes are sloppy (they kind of flop around at each other like in a Jean Claude Van-Damme movie). To be fair, I believe that the version of the film I saw was the American cut which is missing 19 minutes of footage from the original, and from what I could tell from the "deleted scenes" section of the disk, this may account for why the characters' motivation makes no sense. The only redeeming parts of the film are a few really beautiful FX/scenic shots, but these shots are static. The best shots in an action film are static shots... Promise...Broken.... Movie Review: Absolute Masterpiece!!!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
An Outstanding movie from begining to end. A mixture of a Excellent story, martial arts, special effects and Japanese folklor bring this movie to classic status!! Beautiful cinematography brings it full circle. An Highly Underrated movie!!!! Highly Recommend!!