The Promise (2005)

My passion for Chinese movies got me "The Promise". The film tries to follow the success of "Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon" in Hollywood. But i doubt it fails to impress many audience. The Promise promises to attract only hard-core Asian sword-and-sorcery fans.

Director Chen Kaige (Farewell, My Concubine) seems drawn by the small, human tale of a lovely concubine named Qingcheng (Hong Kong's Cecilia Cheung), cursed as a child by a goddess who promises her great wealth, but under the condition that she loose all the men men she loves until she can figure out how to reverse time.

The concubine attracts the attention of a warrior general (Japan's Hiroyuki Sanada) and Kunlun, his wily slave (Jang Dong-kun of Korea) who can outrun a stampede of bulls and perform other far-fetched feats.

The portion which attracted me is the epic battle scene where the Warrior general claims victory over 30,000 odd barbaric people with his 3000 elite troops (the picture in this post is a scene from the battle). During the beginning the slave gets the confidence of the general when he out beats the buffalo stampede. It seems that the slave comes from the land of Snow who can travel faster than light and hence do time travel. The slave himself gets to know his identity when he defeats the assassin from Snow land sent by the evil general who plots behind the King.Unaware of his plot Kunlun disguises himself as the victorious good general and kills an emperor who was going to dispose of Qingcheng, she mistakenly falls in love with the general. That is just the start of a plot full of mystical elements that get in the way of our emotional investment.

Finally how the slave overcomes death and time to gain the hands of Qingcheng is the rest of the story.Still, The Promise is often visually stunning, thanks to Crouching Tiger's cinematographer Peter Pau and maybe for some moviegoers that will be enough.

The films battle scene and gravity defying chases are visually stunning.