Film Review: The Promise

"Our Revenge Will Be To Survive..."

Whilst I can admit to not always being a fan of outside arguments and discussions regarding the arrival of a new cinematic release, due simply to the fact that after all is said and done, a film is only a film, the controversy revolving around Terry George's The Promise is one which has been an undeniable eye-catcher ever since its' first release way back last year when the ever-popular IMDB rating system was apparently being hacked and improperly used by those accused of awarding the film a measly one star out of ten in a subversive tactic which was regarded as a orchestrated campaign to derail the release of the movie by Armenian genocide deniers. Tough stuff I know, and whilst this may or may not be the case, it did seem strange that a film in which had only been watched by a minuscule amount of audiences at pre-release screenings within festivals seemed to have such a negative reception with over 50,000 one-star ratings being awarded to the film before its' intended wide-spread release date. As for the film itself, The Promise is unfortunately nowhere near as interesting as the events preceding its' release, tackling a harrowing and shocking subject matter and lacing it with sub-par levels of drama and a leading love triangle which verges on the edge of cringe, resulting in a picture which potentially could have had the same impact of a movie such as Son of Saul but with trying narrative twists and awful set design, ends up being a complete and utter bore.

Of the many problems with the movie, the film's choice to focus primarily on the leading trio of the dodgy accented Isaac, the walking contradiction of Le Bon and the always awesome, Christian Bale, is a fundamental movie killer with neither of the characters really having enough development or admirable traits to which an average movie audience can relate with in order to find them interesting. Putting all of their chips on the figure of Oscar Isaac's Mikael, a character who not only decides against marrying his future betrothed in favour of a love affair with the wife of a respected journalist but essentially destroys the life of both said wife and said journalist respectively with his ignorant involvement in getting between them, the audiences involvement never really gets going and the sickening sights of forced drama when the saccharin sweetness of the romance pauses in favour of seemingly out-of-place violence is really quite aggravating to behold. From my point of view, you simply cannot comprehend a 12A rated movie based upon genocide and then fill it with a soppy love story and expect the audience to get on-board with it, and whilst this is exactly the decision those behind the creation of The Promise have got behind, I cannot shy away from the fact that it was not the film I was after regarding such a underdeveloped strand of history and with a narrative as corny as the one holding together Terry George's latest, I take no pleasure in stating that I am probably right. 

Overall Score: 4/10