The Promise (2006)

Load of rubbish!!

Better Late Then Never

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

When the world was young, laid a Kingdom between the Land of Snow and the Barbarian Territory where gods and men lived side by side and promises were lies. When the poor and starving orphaned girl Qingcheng meets the Goddess Manshen (Hong Chen), she accepts to become the wealthy beauty of beauties with the curse that she would lose every man she loves, unless three things happen: snow falls in the spring, time moves backwards and the dead comes back to life. Years later, the slave Kunlun (Dong-Kun Jang) helps the Great General Master of the Crimson Armor Guangming (Hiroyuki Sanada) to defeat a barbarian army with almost seven times more warriors, and Kunlun becomes his slave. When Guangming is wounded, he asks Kunlun to wear his armor and save the king from the cruel Duke of the North Wuhuan (Nicholas Tse) that put the Imperial City under siege with his army. However, Kunlun kills the king to save Princess Qingcheng (Cecilia Cheung) and promises her to never let her die. Princess Qingcheng falls in love for the man of the crimson armor that she believes is General Guangming. When Snow Wolf (Ye Liu) saves Kunlun and brings him to the Land of Snow, he recollects his childhood when his mother and sister were killed by the evil Wuhuan. Kunlun decides to return to the Kingdom to face Wuhuan and fight for his love."Wu Ji" is one of the most beautiful fantasies that I have ever seen, and I list this magnificent film among my favorites. The story has romance, magic, betrayal, loyalty, action, supported by a stunning cinematography, great screenplay, wonderful special effects and awesome direction and performances. This film is surprisingly underrated in IMDb, with and user rating of 5.6. Cecilia Cheung is one of the most beautiful actresses of cinema and is perfect in the role of the Beauty of Beauties. In the end, fate can be changed. My vote is nine.Title (Brazil): "A Promessa" ("The Promise")

The colouring of the movie, the fight scenes, the music (if you like the a bit overly dramatic kind, here composed by Klaus Badelt, a German composer who also has worked with Hans Zimmer) and the acting are good here.What didn't work were the effects. At the beginning there is a scene, which does look fake (it did in the theatre I saw it at the International Film Festival in Berlin ). But that isn't the main point I'm criticizing ... the plot seems overly bloated at times and sometimes you get the feeling they could show more of some characters as well.And the other point is, that the chemistry could be better between the actors. It's noble to have actors from Japan, (South) Korea and China, but in the end, it might have been too ambitious. Still if you like your Martial Arts mixed with good Drama you can watch this (although I'd recommend MUSA, if you haven't watched that already!)

What happens when a great story is miss directed? "Wu ji" does.Kaige Chen should have given the job of directing this movie to someone else. I wonder if Yimou Zhang would have taken the challenge..."The Promise" is a beautiful and dramatic love story that takes over the screen like few do these days. Epic, this movie is capable of offering the viewer 2 hours of strong emotions.Nice photography, nice sets and a nice cast make everything look consistent and well done but... I don't blame them for the low quality special effects on some of the scenes but I do blame them for using them some many times knowing they weren't up to the task. It seems this was the highest budget of all time for an oriental movie so I get the idea that they really should have hired better CGi experts, who knows, Hollywood people, it couldn't have harmed that much...What we get is sometimes overuse of CGi that lacks in realism and I can only blame the director for this. Take for example "Hero", "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" or even "House of a Thousand Daggers". These movies also have a lot of CGi but they focus much more on simple and outstanding visual effects than ambitious stunts that come short in realism."Wu ji" is a must see for all the people who's been following this type of cinema making for the last years but it goes down against other movies like itself.6/10

Chen Kaige is no stranger to epics, and he has shown he knows how to handle it. In this movie though, the director perhaps stretched his material little too much to make a movie that it was not meant to be. The movie's plot is burdened by its extraneousness, and its characters are not grounded properly to reach the depth this movies seems to want reach. However, the movie still is entertaining if viewed with lighter heart to ignore its superfluous elements.The main flaw of the movie lies in its directions. The heart of the story reads more as a fairytale, rather than a grand storyline that supplements complex characters that made his previous two epics "Farewell My Concubine" and "The Emperor and the Assassin" successes. Even amidst of their grand story lines of the aforementioned movies, the driving engines for those movies were the Dostoevskian depth his characters display in the stories. In this movie though, the director falls a bit short on both ends, and the reason seems to be the director's trying bit to much with what was given. The movie might have been more successful as a straightforward fairytale, yet the movie is burdened by extraneous story lines that tries to give extra depths with unsuccessful results. The 10+ minutes preview of the movie hinted for something extravagant, an epic set in almost Peter Greenwayesque background, yet the movie fails to live up to what it seems to want to be.The movie, with all its flaws, still offers value. The main story still has some power to enchant, especially viewed as a fairytale. The cinematography, as usual for Chen Kaige affair, can be breathtaking at times. The acting throughout the movie is solid. The movie is weighed down by its own expectations, but underneath it, the movie is still entertaining at its core.