The Promise

Year:2005
Director:Chen Kaige
Cast:Jang Dong-Gun, Hiroyuki Sanada, Cecilia Cheung Pak-Chi, Nicholas Tse Ting-Fung, Liu Ye, Chen Hong
Description:
Another
legendary Chinese director tries his hand at SFX-enhanced
wuxia with The Promise. Chen Kaige co-wrote
and directed this garish fantasy, full of daring visuals,
generic characters, and more than a few mystifying
moments. The result is part beauty and part beast;
an attractive yet lumbering art-house fantasy that
will engender either "love it" or "hate
it" reactions. If the Internet is your guide,
then "hate it" may be the prevailing emotion,
as The Promise is being absolutely killed on
many a BBS or forum. But The Promise also scored
a Best Foreign Language Film nomination at the Golden
Globe Awards, indicating that someone actually
thinks the movie is good.
Who's not seeing the full
picture here? Probably both sides, as The Promise
is neither brilliant nor all-out bad, though its success
is likely linked to just how forgiving or tolerant
the audience is of its fantastic excesses. In the
first twenty minutes audiences get a taste of just
how unbelievably excessive The Promise can
be with an action sequence featuring slave Kunlun
running alongside a raging
stampede of bulls. Kunlun starts the chase on his
hands and feet, but soon graduates to running upright,
a sign of his upcoming transformation from submissive
slave to proud man. Even untrained film readers should
note the symbolism, but what's more noticeable are
the god-awful visual effects from Hong Kong effects
house Centro Digital. Combined with the bright costumes
and cartoonish acting, The Promise certainly
looks like it's going to be a stinker.
But things calm down
somewhat after the plot starts to kick in. Kunlun
is hired to be the personal slave of General Guangming
, a celebrated and
ruthless warrior wearing magnificent gold and crimson
armor. Guangming is called back to the capital to
protect the King from the forces of Wuhuan , a preening prettyboy who's after the King's
girlfriend, Princess Qingcheng . However,
the Goddess Manshen shows up out of nowhere
to tell Guangming that the man wearing the Crimson
Armor will be responsible for the King's death, and
will become a national pariah. Guangming scoffs at
her prophecy, but after an unsuccessful assassination
attempt by Wuhuan's pet assassin Snow Wolf
leaves Guangming injured, he sends Kunlun in his place
- wearing the crimson armor. The King ends up turning
on Qingcheng, and seeing a woman in peril, Kunlun
kills the King.
Kunlun's massive error
sparks a convoluted love triangle. After saving Qingcheng,
Kunlun becomes enamored of her. However, since Qingcheng
believes Guangming was her savior, Guangming takes
advantage of her misinformation by claiming credit,
the benefit being that he can romp in the sack with
Qingcheng. Hiroyuki Sanada and Cecilia Cheung get
a highly-publicized and somewhat hot love scene, which could account for
Sanada's frisky onscreen demeanor. Of all the actors,
Sanada seems to be having the most fun as the roguish
Guangming. On the other hand, Jang Dong-Gun is all
business playing a frustratingly dopey character.
Kunlun is a bit of a simpleton, and the fact that
he runs all over the place at top speeds makes him
seem like the Asian version of Forrest Gump. As Guangming
continues to fool Qingcheng into sleeping with him,
Wuhuan plots his revenge, and Kunlun sprints to and
fro across the countryside in search of his true identity.
By the way, Kunlun can also run fast enough to travel
through time. By now, half the audience has begun
laughing hysterically.
The other half? They
might be intrigued, if not entertained by all the
silly stuff happening. The Promise is an all-out
fantasy, in that it makes up its own rules for its
world, and simply asks the audience to buy in, or
suffer the consequences. The consequences are thinking
that the movie is lame. The benefit of buying in:
diversion, if not actual entertainment. The Promise
is a spectacle of the highest order, though the line
it walks between entertaining camp and laughable crap
is so thin that it requires real work not to become
totally alienated. The film is filled with many touches
that feel more suitable for comic books than big-screen
pageantry, and at times the film seems to acknowledge
it. Nicholas Tse's performance as Wuhuan is entertainingly
campy, and his character's silly costumes and accessories
only enhance that. Kunlun's ability to run through
time is also another silly conceit - though it's acceptable
if you remember that this is a fantasy. If one goes
in thinking that The Promise will be nothing
more than entertaining fantasy crap, then extreme
disappointment might be averted.
Unfortunately, steeling
yourself for the worst can't fix all of The Promise's
problems. Its status as a fantasy can excuse some
of the film's silliness, but the world Chen Kaige
creates is still too simplistic. The world of The
Promise feels too confined and unfinished to be
properly convincing. The politics and society make
no sense, and there are no glimpses of anything remotely
"normal", e.g. average people or non-soldiers.
Everything about the world seems to exist to cater
to the four main characters and their intertwined
destinies. A good fantasy should create a living,
breathing world beyond the confines of the film frame,
and The Promise fails at that. Furthermore,
Qingcheng is a startlingly unsympathetic character.
Presumably, the audience is supposed to care who she
ends up with, but even her cursed existence is not enough to create sympathy for her. Cecilia
Cheung looks magnificent and emotes valiantly, but
she also gives Qingcheng an icy demeanor that's hard
to get by. In the end, it's questionable if she manages
to make the character worth caring about.
What's left then? Besides
the gorgeous spectacle, there's some nifty action,
an effective turn from Liu Ye as the tragic Snow Wolf,
and simply the high camp silliness of the entire production.
On some levels, The Promise can be fun because
it can be laughed at. The film title and Chen Kaige's
name may lead some to believe that a seriously great
film is in the offing, but Chen seems to have subverted
that belief by creating such a garish and overwrought
spectacle that he's practically begging for the film
to be classified as a parody. The Promise falls
well short of classic status by virtue of its gaudy
execution, though Chen's ambitious reach does provide
enough to warrant The Promise "worth seeing"
status. More cynically, The Promise provides
both good and bad stuff depending on your taste. If
you're not intruigued or enchanted by the ornate production
or Chen Kaige's ambitious vision, you can always rubberneck
at the glorious train wreck he's put together.