Movie Review - The Promise - Wu Ji - I Promise you it SUCKED
An epic fantasy about a love triangle between a general, a princess and a slave in ancient China. Empowered by the love of a slave, a royal concubine is given the chance to make an extraordinary decision. Its an epic story about "promise, betrayal, nations and love". Can Love Change Destiny?
I finally got around to watching this, Wu Ji or The Promise looked like a good epic swordplay film..
With an International cast inlcuding Jang Dong-Kun (Korea), Cecilia Cheung (Hong Kong), Hiroyuki Sanada (Japan), Liu Ye (China), and Nicholas Tse (Hong Kong) this looked to be a great movie.
A production by Chen Kaige, I thought perhaps an answer to the masterful Hero by Zhang Yimou...but sadly not. A mish-mash childish fantasy it turned out to be, the beautiful cinematography and scenery wasted. Also note with an astonishing budget of USD40 million (making it the most expensive Asian film ever made), it couldn't pull something decent out of the bag.
The acting from all 3 lead males was very good, and the story quite an interesting one.
I was turned off from the start though, it was slow moving and overly poetic, without really capturing any real beauty.
Then the horribly cheap CG during the bull running scene, and the superman-esque character of Kunlun...it was just laughable.
I actually laughed out loud a few times during 'serious' scenes due to the stupidity of the direction and the cheap looking CG.
It's a shame, it could of been so good. I definately would NOT recommend watching this waste of 2 hours.
The overly complex plot, convuluted story line, cheesy artsy scenes and horrible CG really killed it dead.
I'd give it a very disappointing 4.5/10
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