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Promise, The

EMAILPRINTMoonstone Entertainment

Promise, The reviews
53
4.8 User Score:

Mixed or average reviews

Based on 26 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 8 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info

Genre(s): Action  |  Drama  |  Fantasy  |  Foreign

Written by: Chen Kaige

Directed by: Chen Kaige

Release Date:
Theatrical: December 30, 2005
DVD: December 19, 2006

Running Time: 102 minutes, Color

Origin: China / Hong Kong / Japan / South Korea

Summary

RATING: Not Rated

Starring Cecilia Cheung, Dong-Kun Jang, Ye Liu, Cheng Qian, Hiroyuki Sanada, and Nicholas Tse

This fantasy epic tells the love story between a royal concubine and a slave.

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson

For Kaige, The Promise can't exactly be called a return to form--it's more a return to "Hero" and "House Of Flying Daggers" director Zhang Yimou's form. Either way, it's still glorious.

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90

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

Chen's masterful, deeply perceptive direction of his superb cast is equaled by the film's luminous cinematography, rich yet spare and stylized production and costume design, and rousing score.

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80

New York Magazine David Edelstein

I found The Promise pretty hard to resist. A heady blend of swordplay, somersaults, fairy-tale romance, and computer-generated whoosh.

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75

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Whether or not the story makes any sense, The Promise promises to transport - and does.

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75

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

In keeping with that home-team tradition, The Promise lives up to the title --it really delivers the eye-popping goods.

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70

LA Weekly F. X. Feeney

Some critics are badly selling the film short, when the story it tells, measured strictly in terms of emotional power and overall fun, is as moving and pleasurable as any matinee item by Ford, Hawks or Raoul Walsh.

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70

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Chen Kaige clearly intended this Chinese fantasy-action spectacle to top Zhang Yimou's "Hero," and I must admit that I prefer it to the earlier movie: the digital effects are sometimes excessive, yet Chen's story of a loyal slave, his master, and a wealthy, seemingly doomed princess is more affecting, especially in the closing stretch.

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67

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

Like many of Chen's movies, which are so precise and composed and lush, it's not really emotionally engaging. It is, however, a dazzling and dynamic spectacle that risks being ridiculous to create an unreal world of the romantic imagination.

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63

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

I'm not sure the director should return to this particular genre, whatever you'd call it. But he is, in fact, a real director.

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63

TV Guide Ethan Alter

The mixture of action, drama and romance isn’t as potent, and Kaige’s reliance on subpar special effects hurts the movie. Wu xia fans will still find things to like, but the uninitiated will probably find this slow going.

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60

The New York Times Dana Stevens

The Promise occupies a curious landscape somewhere between opera and cartoon.

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60

Variety Robert Koehler

A mixed bag of near-risible storylines, second-rate CG effects, some fabulous set pieces, somewhat cartoonish martial arts fighting and difficult international casting.

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60

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

While it aspires to draw the same audiences who admired "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Hero," The Promise is but a pale imitation of those landmark films.

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58

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Sumptuous and beautiful and as silly as a sack of nose glasses.

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50

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Has a daft sweep, and if you're in the mood for empty swordplay in baroque settings, purple dialogue delivered with straight faces, and romantic yearnings that never, ever resolve, The Promise may be your cup of oolong.

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50

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The actors were mostly nondescript, sometimes noticeably clumsy. Stunt coordinator Dion Lam brought a bit of freshness to the martial arts choreography, but the rest of the film was as stale as a week-old carp on a fish vendor's pushcart.

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50

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

You can't help wondering how the same Fifth Gen filmmaker who made "Yellow Earth" and "Life on a String" could've fallen on such hard times, or justified such goofiness to himself.

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50

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The over-the-top acting is forgivable, but the plot's incoherence is not.

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50

Entertainment Weekly Staff (Not credited)

There's a nice Road Runner-cartoon moment when the slave runs really, really fast, carrying the wounded general on his back while dodging an attack of CG bulls. I can't imagine Road Runner was what Chen had in mind for the most expensive movie ever made in China, but then, I was born too late for the time of the snowy eagle.

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50

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Like its images, The Promise billows through the imagination as it unfolds but it leaves little lasting impression once its last feather has fluttered.

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50

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

So absurdly overproduced that there's even a surfeit of cherry blossoms. By the end they look like litter.

42

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

It aims for outlandish and athletic love lyrics and instead achieves all the potency of a makeshift nonsense song banged out on a toy lyre.

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40

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

The movie is full of invasions, assassination attempts, chases and escapes in seemingly random order, the result being completely chaotic.

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38

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Pretty much a mess of a movie; the acting is overwrought, the plot is too tangled to play like anything BUT a plot, and although I know you can create terrific special effects at home in the basement on your computer, the CGI work in this movie looks like it was done with a dial-up connection.

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25

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

The prologue sets a simpleton tone that, distressingly, continues throughout.

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12

New York Post V.A. Musetto

The Promise employs laughable computer effects and second-rate martial-arts fighting to tell the hard-to-figure story of a princess and her three lovers.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 4.8 (out of 10) based on 8 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

James S. gave it a1:
Note that when it comes to Asian martial arts films, American critics tend to be more lenient because of its novelty, or the assumptions that the incoherent plot lines could be due to "lost in translation". So users should review the review and moderate it down a few grades to be objective. Especially so if you are familiar with this genre of film before it caught on with the west.

Paul K. gave it a4:
Don't believe the hype. While the story may be of interest to some, it is ultimately too cliche. That said, my biggest problem with this film were the visuals. Some of the effects are fine, but a majority are flat out bad. Consistency in the quality of effects would have made Kevin Thomas' quote about this being "one of the most beautiful films imaginable" valid. As it stands, this is not even close to Crouching Tiger, Hero, or Flying Daggers. Wait for video, if you must.

Kai Y. gave it a1:
Cheesy, tacky, corny and thoroughly unbelievable (even by fantasy standards). Tse's rant about how Cheung's theft of a bun from him set him down on the road of evil is the most laughably ridiculous piece of crap ever spouted on screen.

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