By Pete Mills, on 26-01-2008 19:44

The Promise Distributor: Warner Home Video Format: Region 1 NTSC – US and Canada only Length: 103 min. Aspect Ratio: Widescreen (1.66:1) Audio: Mandarin, English (dubbed) Subtitles: English, Spanish, French Extras: ‘Making of The Promise’ documentary; Additional scenes; theatrical trailer Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1

Year of Release: 2005; Origin: China, Japan, South Korea; Studio: China Film, 21 Century Shengkai Film, Moonstone Entertainment, Capgen Investment Group, Show East.

Director: Chen Kaige; Producer: Chen Kaige, Chen Hong; Script: Chen Kaige; Action Director: Stephen Tung Wei, Dion Lam Dik-on; Cast Cecilia Cheung Pak-chi, Jang Dong-kun, Hiroyuki Sanada, Lau Yip, Nicholas Tse Ting-fung.

Alternative Titles: Wu ji (Chinese title); Master of the Crimson Armour

Plot Synopsis

Medieval China: As a little orphaned girl, Princess Qingcheng (Cecilia Chung) made a promise with a sexy sorcerer that in order to live a life of extreme airbrushed beauty and prosperity, she must sacrifice the chance of ever falling in love. Twenty years later and she’s a saucy little sexpot married to the King who brings entire armies down to their knees with one shimmer of her nightdress. Men instantly fall in love with her, and this includes Kunlun.

A fellow orphan, Kunlun (Jang Dong-kun) is considered crazy because of his obsessive allegiance and his superhuman powers (he can run faster than a herd of raging bulls without seemingly breaking a sweat). He’s from the Land of Snow, which supposedly explains why he can harness such ludicrous feats of computer generated energy (although this still isn’t probably explained), and he puts his skills to great use as the personal slave for the King’s top general (Hiroyuki Sanada). The General falls for the Princess, and gets his slave Kunlun to kill the King and kidnap the girl. In the General’s arms, the Princess begins to fall in love, unbeknownst to her that her real knight in shining armour is in fact the slave boy, Kunlun.

Now enter a third party into this twisted love triangle, Wuhan (Nicholas Tse), who appears to be fresh out of diapers and far too pretty to be a ruthless warlord intent on kidnapping the Princess and keeping her in some surreal bird cage. He launched the attack on the Land of Snow which wiped out Kunlun’s family and forced its remaining inhabitants into a life of servitude. So each of the stories combine in a courtroom where the loved up General, now happy to turn his back on a life dedicated to war, admits to killing the King when the real murderer lies waiting in the wings. As for the Princess, she’s fallen in love with the wrong man, and feels awfully silly when she finds out.

Review

Back in the 1980s, Chen Kaige was heralded as one of the best ‘new wave’ art directors to come out of China alongside Zhang Yimou. The two directors have been at a stalemate ever since, never quite being able to recoup their glory days with somewhat lackluster offerings during the past decade. That was until Taiwanese director Ang Lee made Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and proved that the wu xia/swordplay genre of China’s yesteryear could again spark worldwide significance through western pacing, romantic storytelling and great visual feasts of stunning sets, costumes and martial arts movement. The recipe has since been given a kaleidoscopic boost of colour and verve from Zhang Yimou, who forgave his socio-political statements in favour of the new money-spinning wu xia formula and promptly made a trilogy of exquisite swordplay fantasies – Hero, House of Flying Daggers and Curse of the Golden Flower. Clearly not to be outdone, and now clearly preferring to follow the trend instead of setting it, Chen Kaige steps up to his international duty and performs his own little wu xia dance-off with this film, The Promise, which takes Zhang’s formula a step further in the reality stakes and manifests a gogglebox of astronomical absurdities, which feels like Lord of the Rings, The Princess Bride and Shrek all at the same time.

The film has suffered an insurmountable amount of criticism since its disappointing release and much of this appears to stem from a horribly misguided marketing campaign which set to place Kaige’s film as the martial arts equivalent of Zhang Yimou’s latest work, whereas this film is far removed from Zhang’s world. In fact, its not even sure which planet it’s on, with a heady cocktail of fantasy effects and stunning period costume, it is neither a straight ahead drama nor an adventure film. The main suspense arrives in the fighting, which is adequately stunning, but fight fans expecting the violence to be as relentless as Hero will no doubt be horribly disappointed. Other criticisms dig into the gaudy special effects, which at times possesses a distinct Looney Tunes quality (particularly Kunlun’s running abilities) and when used properly it can be quite visually ravishing, like the beauty of Peter Pau’s exquisite cinematography. Pau’s work can brighten up just about any lens, and he works his particularly eager magic on the movie’s leading beauty Cecilia Cheung, who is presented like a siren of biblical proportions and to great cinematic effect.

But the cast are excessively young and struggle to stamp any major authority into their demanding characters, with Nicholas Tse and the film’s star Jang Dong-kun really struggling to raise any emotion, unlike veteran actor Hiroyuki Sanada who is unfortunately made to look like Father Christmas in comparison. So instead, Kaige concentrates on assaulting the senses with realms of fairytale which are barely comprehensible, like the scenes near the end where Kunlun learns how to travel back in time by running really fast. Like, what’s that about? There are a few stolen moments of magic, but once you’ve seen the bull running sequence at the start of the film then you will approach the rest of the movie with a very weary and skeptical head.