The Promise (2005) | DVD Review

As stunningly beautiful as The Promise is to behold, from its gorgeous cinematography and lighting that make the colurs more vivid than in real life to its glorious battle scenes, the film suffers from a thin plot and underdeveloped characters.

Occasionally, a film will come along that so captivates its audience in a myriad of ways that it kind of creates a demand among moviegoers for more of the same. At least that’s what the producers of the subsequent films would have us believe. In this genre, that film was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. While it may not have been the first Asian-mythical-martial arts-romance movie (talk about a sub-genre!), it was the first one that became widely popular throughout North America. Since then, we’ve been inundated with many more imports with varying degrees of success, artistically and at the box office. Hero and House of Flying Daggers are two of the more memorable ones, not to mention Kung Fu Hustle, which doesn’t quite fit into the same mould. Now we have The Promise, the latest period piece from China.

The Promise, whose original title Wu ji actually means ‘without limits’, is the most expensive film in Chinese history with a budget equivalent to $35 Million US, which seems to have all been spent on visual production and CGI effects, leaving little for story development and the fleshing out of characters. This is a thin story about a girl who makes a deal with the goddess of destiny that will see her lose every man she ever loves in exchange for all the riches and beauty she could ever hope for. Later in life, a grown Qingcheng (Cecilia Cheung) falls in love with the general (Hiroyuki Sanada) who saves her from being killed by her husband the king. Of course, what she doesn’t know is that the man who saved her is actually General Guangming’s slave, Kunlun (Dong-Kun Jang). Throw Wuhuan (Nicholas Tse) and Snow Wolf (Ye Liu), an assassin and his slave, into the mix and what you get is a convoluted plot about love and war among humans and their super-powered slaves.

Director Kaige Chen (Farewell My Concubine) also wrote the screenplay, and he seems to have been more interested in mesmerizing his audience with the beauty on the screen than with the story or the characters. His use of the color palette is exquisite: never has red been so bold, never has a field of grass been so green or the sky so blue. It truly is a stunning film to watch; just don’t expect to come away from it understanding much of what happened in the story.

Since the sound and the visuals are pretty much the best things about The Promise, there’s no need to discuss how good it looks and sounds in this widescreen transfer in Dolby Digital 5.1.
As for features, we get:
– 7 deleted scenes preceded by onscreen text explaining why they were excised from the film. These scenes actually should have been left in the film as they go a long way toward clearing up the muddiness of the plot.
– “The Making of The Promise”, a long featurette that more or less breaks down how they made every single battle scene in the film. Pretty interesting stuff.
– The theatrical trailer for the film.

One thing: when watching this film, do not watch the English-dubbed version. While it’s not bad, it serves to confuse the viewer more than reading the English subtitles does.

When The Promise was offered to me for review I jumped at the chance, given Kaige Chen’s pedigree. However, as much of a treat as it is for the eyes, it left my mind wanting more.

Movie rating – 2.5

Disc Rating – 2.5