The Promise (WIP 2006) [HD]

The Promise
Being a big a fan of Asian cinema I had read quite a few negative to luke warm reviews of this film and thought I would give it a try.

The Story is not as bad as I was led to believe. I will not go into the story description as it has been covered. It is full of the virtues that I like so much in Asian films. Honor, sacrafice, and death.

The DVD I watched was the shorter version. It includes the deleted scenes which I watched and do not feel they added or subtracted a whole lot from the story. The fact that the Asian release included them makes me wonder why they were cut out. The bothersome issue with this DVD is the film defaults to the awful english over dubs. You have to manually go into the menu and choose Chinese (Mandarin), and then designate english sub titles.

I love Crouching Tiger, Hero and House of Flying Daggers. This movie is none of those. While it has some beautiful moments it does seem 'synthethic'. If it were the directors intent to...

Great Concept But Fails In The End
In the beginning a starving young girl named Qingcheng is seen prying food out of the hands of dead soldiers in a forest. While running home to share her bread with her mother she drops it in a lake. As she starts to cry the bread is brought back to her by a goddess and she tells Qingcheng to eat the bread but she will not eat because she is saving it for her sick mother. The goddess tells Qingcheng that her mother is dead and then offers her a choice of riches and beauty but all men she falls in love for will die unless she can turn back time and undo what she has just done. She's a little girl with nowhere to go and no food so of course this deal is too tempting to pass up and she accepts. A while later during a battle of a 3000 man army defeating 20,000 barbarians a slave named Kunlun with a speedy gift is discovered while trying to outrun the barbarians.

Kunlun's ability impresses general Guangming also known as "Master of the Crimson Armor" and is taken in as a slave...

Chen Kaige's Martial Arts Fantasy Tale: Beautiful, But Uneven and Often Looks Silly
[The following review refers to the 124 minute version released in Feb 2006, in Japan.]

`Wu Ji' (meaning `No Limitation') is an epic-scale romance directed by renowned Chen Kaige (`Farewell My Concubine' 'Together'). Like the fantasy tales of `Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' `Hero' and `House of the Flying Daggers,' you can say the film belongs to the film genre usually called `wusha,' but what is impressive about 'Wu Ji' (or `The Promise' with international title) is its cast and crew gathered for the production. But about that, later.

[STORY: LITTLE GIRL] The film opens with a memorable shot, in which an orphaned girl wanders among the dead bodies of warriors in the battlefield. The starving girl meets a beautiful but haughty deity Manshen, the Sorceress (Chen Hong, also co-producer and Chen Kaige's wife), who promises the little girl Quingcheng everything - easy life, status, etc. - on one condition. That is, Quingcheng can never get true love from anyone. And...

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