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The Promise

2016

Terry George

Oscar Isaac, Charlotte Le Bon, Christian Bale, Shohreh Aghdashloo ...

6.3

3,064

Adventure. Drama. Romance Set during the last days of the Ottoman Empire in 1915, “The Promise” follows a love triangle between Michael (Jason Isaac), a brilliant medical student, the beautiful and sophisticated Ana (Charlotte Le Bon), and Chris (Christian Bale) — a renowned American journalist based in Paris. Bale will play Chris, an AP reporter in love with both a woman and the danger of being in a combat zone amidst a world that is falling apart.

	Author	Review
United States	John DeFore The Hollywood Reporter	"An earnest but much too formulaic attempt to humanize this historic atrocity (...) , the picture moves with a mechanical predictability that would be considerably more annoying with a less watchable cast"	NEU
United States	Peter Debruge Variety	"An epic bore. (...) the events in question deserve better than a sloggy melodrama in which the tragedy is forced to take a backseat to a not especially compelling love triangle."	NEG
United States	Kevin Jagernauth IndieWire	"Great cinema allows moviegoers to find their own connection to the past (...) It’s a quality the medium’s best war movies contain, but it’s an element 'The Promise' sorely misses"	NEU
United States	Matt Donnelly The Wrap	"A lush and satisfying epic that ticks a lot of boxes"	POS
United States	Peter Travers Rolling Stone	"The actors do what they can to keep their heads above the sudsy script (...) It’s distressing to see a great subject go wrong in the right hands. (...) Rating: ★★ (out of 4)"	NEU
United States	Kevin Jagernauth The Playlist	"Where “Hotel Rwanda” was formulaic yet affecting, “The Promise” finds George losing his touch completely, delivering a war movie that’s high on soap opera."	NEG
United States	Jeannette Catsoulis The New York Times	"'The Promise' is a big, barren wartime romance that approaches the Armenian genocide with too much calculation and not nearly enough heat."	NEU
United Kingdom	Benjamin Lee The Guardian	"'Hotel Rwanda' director Terry George takes on a largely uncovered part of history in this often soapy but well-intentioned and extravagantly mounted epic (...) Rating: ★★★ (out of five)"	NEU
United Kingdom	Tim Grierson Screendaily	"A soggy World War I romantic drama, The Promise finds Oscar Isaac lending his soulful, heartthrob magnetism to material that fails to achieve the timeless, old-fashioned feel to which it aspires"	NEU

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