09-16-2020, 04:31 PM
The Promise (2016) (US Netflix)
![[Image: The-Promise-1170x657.jpg]](https://i.postimg.cc/qMn4KFD0/The-Promise-1170x657.jpg)
The Promise is an historic film. It's the first major Western narrative feature about the Armenian Genocide, in which ~1.5m were killed, and it's a $100m-budgeted movie whose proceeds went entirely to charity. Not that there were any proceeds, alas - despite starring Oscar Isaac and Christian Bale, with English spoken throughout and a PG-13 rating, it was a box-office bomb. It was largely financed by Las Vegas resorts magnate Kirk Kerkorian, who, despite buying MGM studios in 1969, wasn't able to get a picture depicting the genocide off the ground until approving the script shortly before his death... And now the virtually unseen big-budget picture has hit US Netflix. (Note: the blu-ray is 2.35:1, but the Netflix stream is 16:9. Apart from a few oddly close shots, however, I didn't notice any obvious cropping.)
So: how is it? Most critics weren't harsh on it, exactly, but they weren't too kind, either; most didn't care for the fictional romance melodrama. From Wiki:
[Producer] Esrailian said that he used a romance plot in order to "use old fashioned storytelling" to immerse an unfamiliar audience into the plot, hoping to avoid making the film only "a history lesson" and making a "throwback to cinema" like Doctor Zhivago or Lawrence of Arabia; in another interview he also cited Casablanca. Esrailian stated that he would have encountered less difficulty producing "a straightforward genocide story" but chose to use the romance angle anyway.
True, the story isn't amazing, but it worked well enough for me. Isaac and Bale are strong as always, Charlotte Le Bon is very cute, the production values are first-rate, and the whole thing is generally worth a watch, especially for historical war movie fans. (Also, I totally didn't recognize the always-great Tom Hollander under a particularly bushy beard, though I should have.)
Grade: B+
The Promise is an historic film. It's the first major Western narrative feature about the Armenian Genocide, in which ~1.5m were killed, and it's a $100m-budgeted movie whose proceeds went entirely to charity. Not that there were any proceeds, alas - despite starring Oscar Isaac and Christian Bale, with English spoken throughout and a PG-13 rating, it was a box-office bomb. It was largely financed by Las Vegas resorts magnate Kirk Kerkorian, who, despite buying MGM studios in 1969, wasn't able to get a picture depicting the genocide off the ground until approving the script shortly before his death... And now the virtually unseen big-budget picture has hit US Netflix. (Note: the blu-ray is 2.35:1, but the Netflix stream is 16:9. Apart from a few oddly close shots, however, I didn't notice any obvious cropping.)
So: how is it? Most critics weren't harsh on it, exactly, but they weren't too kind, either; most didn't care for the fictional romance melodrama. From Wiki:
[Producer] Esrailian said that he used a romance plot in order to "use old fashioned storytelling" to immerse an unfamiliar audience into the plot, hoping to avoid making the film only "a history lesson" and making a "throwback to cinema" like Doctor Zhivago or Lawrence of Arabia; in another interview he also cited Casablanca. Esrailian stated that he would have encountered less difficulty producing "a straightforward genocide story" but chose to use the romance angle anyway.
True, the story isn't amazing, but it worked well enough for me. Isaac and Bale are strong as always, Charlotte Le Bon is very cute, the production values are first-rate, and the whole thing is generally worth a watch, especially for historical war movie fans. (Also, I totally didn't recognize the always-great Tom Hollander under a particularly bushy beard, though I should have.)
Grade: B+
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