Featured Audience Ratings

• xGary X

  
  A famous and well respected general and his faithful slave vie for the affections of a beautiful princess while battling the evil ruler of their land. Inevitably trying to ape the epic scale and poetry of the likes of Crouching Tiger or Hero, The Promise is actually just a dim-witted… More
  A famous and well respected general and his faithful slave vie for the affections of a beautiful princess while battling the evil ruler of their land. Inevitably trying to ape the epic scale and poetry of the likes of Crouching Tiger or Hero, The Promise is actually just a dim-witted fairy tale populated with badly acted cartoon characters who spout inane fortune cookie platitudes at one another. Visually, the costume design is as attractive as you'd expect but there's also some very dodgy set design and an overuse of awful, cheap looking CGI. There is no narrative flow or even logic to the story and Kaige Chen is clearly just a hack Michael Bay wannabe, making this stir-fried turkey one of the worst examples of the Americanization of Asian cinema I've yet seen. Avoid.

• Jens S

  
  In a world where people running as fast as the wind drag girls on leashes behind them like kites anything's possible. So no one should make the mistake and compare this to fantastic but somewhat historical movies like Hero. This is pure fantasy, even without made-up creatures.… More
  In a world where people running as fast as the wind drag girls on leashes behind them like kites anything's possible. So no one should make the mistake and compare this to fantastic but somewhat historical movies like Hero. This is pure fantasy, even without made-up creatures. The plot of the cursed girl between three men isn't entirely new but the story remains rather unpredictable in all its craziness. It's not always entirely certain why the characters act the way they do, but each and every frame of this movie looks like a frikkin picture. Its picture should be in dictionaries under eye candy. The stunningly beautiful cinematography, sets, costumes and design combined with a pompous soundtrack make up for a lot of plot holes and create a larger than life experience of epic proportions. When the ugly guy in black is not the villain and the pretty bad guy still has the feather-like hairdo after taking his helmet off you realize you're in the middle of a real life manga. The result is so very entertaining, that all its flaws are easily ignored.

• Walter M

  
  [font=Century Gothic]"The Promise" starts out with a young girl, Qingcheng, forced to scavenge food from dead soldiers to feed herself. After having lost a morsel of food, she is approached by the goddess Manshen(Hong Chen) and told that she has a great destiny ahead of her.… More
  [font=Century Gothic]"The Promise" starts out with a young girl, Qingcheng, forced to scavenge food from dead soldiers to feed herself. After having lost a morsel of food, she is approached by the goddess Manshen(Hong Chen) and told that she has a great destiny ahead of her. In exchange, she will lose every man she ever loves. Qingcheng agrees.[/font] [font=Century Gothic]Flashforward to General Guangming(Hiroyuki Sanada) whose forces are being outnumbered 20,000 to 3,000 against a horde of barbarians. He uses 133 slaves to smoke out the enemy attack, a stampede of bulls, which they do. One of the slaves, Kunlun(Dong-Kun Jang), stops crawling(slaves can only kneel and crawl which makes it very inconvenient if you need them to get something off the top shelf) and begins running very quickly. He outruns the bulls and leads them back to the barbarians, giving the general's forces a rout.(Kunlun is then drafted by the Detroit Lions in the first round of the NFL draft.) The general is so impressed, he appoints Kunlun as his personal slave.[/font] [font=Century Gothic]And, what about Qingcheng(Cecilia Cheung), you ask? Well, she married the king(Cheng Qian) and is now a princess but the castle is being besieged by the Duke of the North, Wuhuan(Nicholas Tse). So, Qingcheng is on the roof about to invent the striptease as Kunlun rides in masqueraded as General Guangming(long story, trust me)...[/font] [font=Century Gothic]"The Promise" may be great looking but it is still a mess and it gets more convoluted as it goes along. And it feels like there were essential scenes cut out of it which would have added much needed substance. Overall, the central lessonof the movie is not to make any potentially life changing decisions while on an empty stomach.[/font]

• Lesley N

  
  Chinese fairy story about the slave, the general and the woman they both want who is destined to lose every man she falls in love with. Apparently one of the most expensive fllms made in China and it shows - it's very very pretty. <img… More
  Chinese fairy story about the slave, the general and the woman they both want who is destined to lose every man she falls in love with. Apparently one of the most expensive fllms made in China and it shows - it's very very pretty. <img src="http://celebritywonder.ugo.com/thumbV2/mp/2006_Wu_ji_(The_Promise)/tn/2006_the_promise_003.jpg">

• William G

  
  A gaudy spectacle of excess best viewed as parody.

• Magnus X

  
  "Once you have accepted your destiny, nothing can alter it unless time flows backwards, snow falls in the spring and the dead come back to life." A beautiful, poetic and sometimes cruel fairy tale about love, war, honor and pride and where nothing is what it seems. A great… More
  "Once you have accepted your destiny, nothing can alter it unless time flows backwards, snow falls in the spring and the dead come back to life." A beautiful, poetic and sometimes cruel fairy tale about love, war, honor and pride and where nothing is what it seems. A great adventure film with a powerful score in the same tradition as Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Hero.

• Anthony V

  
  A beautiful fantasy/romance.

• FanGirl B

  
  Like watching a dream and with about as much of a storyline. I was watching the extended scenes that were on the DVD and I wish they had left most of them in because they would have added a lot to the storyline. But I would recommed this movie for the visual beauty of it alone.

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