Customer Reviews

THE Promise DTS AKA : Mo Gik / Wu Ji

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Fantasy action magic and martial arts are the ingredients of the charming Chinese 121 minutes fairy tail directed by Chan. Like all fairy tails includes a romantic love story. The amazing photography of the movie supports perfectly the really fast action. The Promise is a very good and interesting work and becomes a real promise of what we will see in the near future coming out from the Chinese studios. I will give it only three stars because I believe that the scenario is not that strong as it could be. In the fantasy world everything is allowed.

I ordered this DVD after seeing the trailer online. I was captured by the incredible images. If you want a great plot, you may want to look elsewhere. If you prefer just sitting back and watching a movie filled with imagination and beauty, you will love this one.

The Promise brings to the screen the story of a slave who kills the king of the land and rescues a princess only to fall in love with her. If that wasn't a difficult predicament, the realm's most popular general, who happens to be his master, also has his eyes set on the princess. Little do both of them know that the princess is cursed by the gods...
The film combines fantasy, romance, drama, action and adventure making it one of the best of its kind!
Moreover, the fascinating culture and traditions of China are presented very well in the film.
The plot is excellent and opens a window into the mysterious Orient.
Furthermore, shot on location it provides for some amazing scenery.
Needless to say, the cast have truly outdone themselves with their performances, which are outstanding to say the least! All the actors, without exceptions, give it their 100%! Their great talent and chemistry clearly shows, thus providing an entertaining film that can be watched over and over again.
The setting, the dialogues, the music, the battle sequences, and the costumes are all wonderful!
Very well written and very well presented, it is a movie definitely worth owning, let alone watching, especially for those with a soft spot for History, and especially for Eastern/Oriental enthusiasts.
Strongly recommended along with Seven Swords, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, The House of Flying Daggers, and Hero, to those with a soft spot for all things Chinese.

Okay I need to tell everyone this. This movie is great...BUT!If you saw this movie in American theatre and hated it for its plot hole but did not see the Hong Kong version on DVD. Then people you got suckered. The movie you saw in U.S theatre was cut down to 102 mins from its original 122 min version. So I don't know about you but if you cut out that much film out of the original it's no wonder why you hate the film. And this film is in no way like Hero or House Of Flying Daggers nor was it intended to be so why is everyone saying that the film makers are trying to copy those movies. This movie is also been accused to trying to copy The Matrix for using wire works. Wire works has been around since the 60's way before the Matrix and it was basicaly created by the Asians. So if anything The Matrix copied them. And the Graphics are considered cheesy and not realistic HELLO!! this is a fantasy film so there world is not supposed to look realistic. And people think the graphics in movies like MIRROR MASK are cool but the graphics in this is way better than that one. You may take this as one mans ranting but I bet most people around here who claim they like asian movie only like Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon, Hero, House of Flying Daggers. But they never made an effort to see any other asian films that big time studios in america don't import here to show. If that is the case then you should not consider yourselves as fans. Don't rent the U.S release cause your only gonna piss yourself off get the imported version. But don't get the one that has the cover where Jang Dong-Gun Is hugging Cecilia Cheung that one cut 8 to 10 mins of the film get the 2-disc version.

This movie is a fantasy epic tale. Many people will give this bad reviews becuase it is not realistic. Its a fantasy. Its not supposed to be. This movie is mindblowing. The story is beautiful. Being a Jang dung-gun fan, i bought this and this turned out to be one of the best buys i have done. The cast is perfect. This is one of the highest budget movies from korea, and it shows. I like how different the characters are and how they are portrayed in this world. If you like foreign movies, or fantasy epics, this is the best out there.

All I got to say is that it's very entertaining and very interesting. The action scenes were great... reminds me of Drangon Ball Z...The story is pretty interesting and it does make sense...Very great movie...great addition to your dvd collection...very worth buying!

In a war-ravaged land where danger was rampant and food was scare a young girl named Qingcheng fed herself and her mother by pillaging the bodies of dead soldiers. One day, after finding some bread, Qingcheng pulls the boots off a hanging corpse for her own use. However, "the corpse" is not dead and he is able to string up Qingcheng. After Qingcheng promises to be his slave, he cuts her down and she proceeds to ask if she can see his helmet that she uses to smack him on the head before fleeing.

While crossing some water Qingcheng drops her bread, but the bread is caught by a goddess and is brought back to Qingcheng. The goddess asks why Qingcheng does not go ahead and eat the bread and the young girl informs the goddess that she is saving the food for her mother. The goddess then tells the girl that her mother is dead. Grief stricken the girl eats the bread, but before she departs the goddess offers her a chance to live a life in which she will have all the food she wants, will be able to wear the most beautiful clothing, and men will fall helplessly in love with her. However, there is of course a catch. All men whom she falls in love with will die. The girl readily accepts the conditions.

Years later, after a brutal battle in which his regiment of 3,000 men was able to defeat a barbarian horde of 20,000, General Guangming is informed that the King is being attacked by the traitorous Duke of the North Wuhuan. While he and his slave Kunlun, a man of extraordinary strength and speed, search for the path back to the kingdom they become lost and decide to split up to find their way. However, while looking for the path, General Guangming comes across the goddess who informs him that the victory against the barbarians would be his last because soon the man wearing the crimson armor, the armor Guangming wears, would kill the King and his name would be besmirched. Laughing, Guangming states that he would never kill the king.

After the goddess departs, Wuhuan's assassin Snow Wolf attacks Guangming. After the battle, Kunlun finds his master wounded and his master tells him to wear his army and save the king. Kunlun asks how can he tell who is the king and Guangming informs him that the king will be the one without a weapon.

Back at the palace, the King and his princess, Qingcheng, stand upon the top of the palace walls surrounded by Wuhuan's soldiers. Wuhuan demands that the king give him Qingcheng, which the king is all too willing to do. Qingcheng angered by this tells the guards that she will strip off a layer of clothing if they will kill the king. Being that her stunning beauty entrances them, Cecilia Cheung IS absolutely gorgeous, they willingly attempt to do as she asks. Infuriated, the king draws his sword and it is at this point that Kunlun, dressed in Guangming's armor, arrives at the scene chucks his sword at the king, which impales him, and rescues Qingcheng. However, their victory is short lived because Wuhuan and his men catch up to him. Wuhuan states that if Guangming jumps he will spare the life of Qingcheng. Kunlun, in love with Qingcheng and knowing that he can survive the fall willingly jumps.
Kunlun returns to his master and returns the crimson armor to him. Guangming is angered, he had been beaten and trussed up to a tree by his own men who did not kill him only because he had been their superior officer, because Kunlun killed the king, but the two hurry to rescue Qingcheng in which they are successful. Qingcheng is in love with Guangming because of the words he said to her before he jumped, you must not die, you have to live, however, she of course does not know that it was actually Kunlun who spoke these words so her heart's desires are misguided, but Kunlun, whose own desires come in second to his master's stands aside while Guangming tries to make Guangming truly fall in love with him. However, can Kunlun truly keep up this farce?

I watched this film twice yesterday: the first time in a movie theater and the second at home. Because my ability to read Chinese is stronger than my listening ability, I was able to understand about 40% of the film because it had sub-titles. However, since I could understand only a portion of the film, I mainly paid attention to the visual and aural aspects of Chen's latest work. The costumes are stunning in an unwieldy way. The suits of armor worn by Guangming and Wuhuan's soldiers are beautiful, but one wonders if an individual could truly fight in something so bulky. The costumes worn by Cecilia Cheung are stunning and lend her a transient appeal as if she is a cherry blossom, albeit one with a core of iron, that will soon fade. The music is decent, but some of the softer pieces are quite beautiful such as the slow piano piece that is played when the camera from overhead zooms to a close up of Cheung's character when she is imprisoned in the golden birdcage. The CG is well done, especially the goddess, but it is used a bit too heavily and it makes some parts of the film quite cheesy.

One interesting aspect of the film is that the main characters are from different parts of Asia. Sanada Hiroyuki, Guangming, is Japanese, Jang Dong-kun, Kunlun, is Korean, while Cecilia Cheung and Nicolas Tse are both from Hong Kong. Being that my listening comprehension of Chinese is not so good I am not sure how well they spoke their lines, but this is an example of an Asian film, there are of course more, in which actors from Korea and Japan play Chinese without raising the same kind of fuss Memoirs of a Geisha produced by casting Gong Li and Zhang Ziyi in the roles of Japanese women.

Was The Promise a good movie? Honestly it was not that great. It seems to be Chen Kaige's version of Zhang Yimou's Hero and House of Flying Daggers. Zhang Yimou was criticized by critics and audiences alike for these two films because they detracted so much from his usual fare and it seems that Chen is receiving criticism not only because of this but that he is also using this film to break into Hollywood. If this is the case or not The Promise also suffers from a high cheese factor, plot holes, and a sometimes-bombastic soundtrack that makes the dialogue hard to hear. However, if you enjoyed Hero and House of Flying Daggers you might like this film as well.

Usually I like chinese fairy-tale-they-fly-and-stop-daggers-with-their-teeth(whatever) movies, but this one was TOO much. I watched it with bunch of friends and we started dying laughing half way thru. By the end of the movie it was a smart-ass-remark contest on some of the stuff in the movie (swiss-army-fan being one of the most hilarious). Man it was just TOO much. Story makes no sense at all, and use of computer animation was TOO obvious not to add to ridiculousness of the overall experience.

As some reviewers at the Berlin festival put it: it's a waste of money, fortunately not of talent, as there is none to be found... The picture gets clearer when you realise that the most expensive picture mainland China has over put out is still only around 35 Mil. Dollars, meaning that all of the technical stuff, the cgi and mattes and whatever is around needed to be bought at cheap suppliers in God knows where - or produced in-house, in China. As with most more sophisticated technological ventures, the result becomes apparent: It claims to be basically the same as the 'real' stuff (the Lord of the Rings or Matrix stuff), but you see immediately that all of it is nothing but the plastic variety of the original. Special effects is nothing you can just copy, you have to know it - and the places where people know are far away from Beijing, and much more expensive, too.
Even more expensive are good scripts, because you cannot just go out and buy them, even if you had unlimited amounts of money. Shame is that when you try to run for Oscar material "in the style of...." (Tiger Dragon, in particular), you are stuck to a certain kind of narrative, even if you don't know what story to tell. So WuJi is the result of a gigantic effort to shove offical Chinese cinema on a global plattform (including forcing the film on all Chinese screens for a while), with the result of Ang Lee running for Oscars with his little love story (banned from the mainland China screens) and Chen KaiGe defintitely not running for anything, maybe away from the critiques. Sounds fair enogh.