The Promise (DVD) (Japan Version) DVD Region 2

The setting of The Promise is a little different than its fellow Asian epics, in that Chen has decided to create his own world instead of going back to either Ancient China or Ancient Korea. In the world of The Promise, a man can outrun a stampeding head of bulls, a man can swing a pair of golden balls and defeat an army of 20,000 men, and a Goddess can float about, dispensing tarot readings for no apparent reason. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, The Promise is basically Legend, Krull, or any of those fantasy/sci-fi/action-adventure movies that were booming in Hollywood during the '80s.

The star of our epic is Korean actor Jang Dong Gun (Taegukgi), playing a slave name Kunlun who has not known freedom, or choice, since he was taken from his home as a child. After his master is killed during a battle being fought by General Guangming, a man decked out in magnificent crimson armor (a.k.a. The Master of the Crimson Armor - harking to the film's temporary US title), Kunlun ends up as Guangming's new slave. Soon, slave and master cross paths with the lovely Princess Qingcheng (Cecilia Cheung), who is so lovely she can get an army to drop their weapons for a glimpse of her in the buff. We also meet the effeminate Duke Wuhuan (Nicholas Tse), who wants Qingcheng for reasons unknown, but if you pay attention you'll probably guess his reasons before it's "shockingly" revealed at the end.

If it sounds as if The Promise meanders, that's probably because it does. The film doesn't get under way until almost 30 minutes in, and even thereafter it continues to idle, seemingly unhurried by the conventions of story progression. Clocking in at just under 2 hours (making Chen's movie easily the shortest of the Asian epics), The Promise is also bothered by unsophisticated editing. To count how many times the film suddenly jumps to a new angle within the same scene is to spend too much time counting. Which is to say, for a big-budget film made by an internationally famous director, the editing problems in The Promise are unforgivable. Did they cut this thing on an Avid or a Moviola?

The main cast is appropriately international ("Get it seen by everyone!" is the motto for big-budget Asian epics nowadays), with Jang Dong Gun hailing from Korea, Sanada Hiroyuki (The Last Samurai) representing Japan (a major import target for the film), and of course Hong Kong's own, Cecilia Cheung and Nicholas Tse, who is still letting his hair do all the acting for him as the film's playboy/villain. I've always found Cecilia Cheung (One Nite in Mongkok) to be appealing, but her character in The Promise is not exactly the model of attractiveness. Written to be the most beautiful woman in the world, Cheung's Qingcheng has the type of personality that makes you think twice about asking her out for lunch.

Although the four main characters get most of the screentime, the film's emotional highlights involve Wuhuan's right-hand assassin, Snow Wolf (Liu Ye), who, as coincidence would have it, comes from the same place as Kunlun . The two men's interactions make up the movie's most sincere and affecting moments, with Snow Wolf's situation beside Wuhuan even less tenable than Kunlun 's. Liu Ye (Purple Butterfly) delivers a perfectly understated portrayal of a doomed man permanently locked in a state of emotional anguish, and it's a crime he's been left out of the film's massive PR push. It's also a shame that Kunlun and Snow Wolf's shared story gets what amounts to a condensed presentation, because this truly has the makings of an epic.

The best way to approach Chen Kaige's The Promise is to just go with the flow. Having wisely set itself beyond any recognizable time period or setting, the movie gets to explore all the wonders of today's special effects, something it does frequently, and with mixed results. And for a film advertised as a martial arts movie, The Promise has surprisingly few fight scenes. The bulk of these are squeezed into the film's first 20 minutes during Guangming's battle against an army of generic "barbarians", and again in the final 20 minutes, which contains about 2 fight scenes total, both much too short, with the final, climactic battle incredibly underwhelming.

The Promise is not nearly as bad as you've heard. True, it's no great film, and the decision to spend so much screentime on the lightweight romantic entanglements between the four leads effectively destroys any chance the film has of being memorable. As a result, The Promise is camp, colorful, and has millions of dollars to buy special effects, some of which looks cheesy as hell, while others, like the background visuals, are stunning. In short, it's everything you want in your Hollywood summer blockbuster - loud, bright, expensive, and vacuous - except, it's, er, from Mainland China.

Movie Grade: 3/5

Review by Nix - BeyondHollywood.com