The Promise was a Chinese movie. It had side-effects that were similar to The Matrix - with flipping over in mid-air and then landing on their feet. There were lots of vibrant colours - and beautiful scenes. However this movie was nothing compared to Japanese samurai movies. The storyline of The Promise was very weak. I watched the English version and found the voice-over annoying. The voices did not match the faces of the actors. It did not seem natural.I watched this movie to learn more about the Chinese art culture and cinematic culture - but did not come out any the wiser. To me, this movie seemed to be a Hollywood copycat - with all the special effects and superficial story. I found the movie to be without truth and void mysticism.

This is a film about a little girl who is hungry so she steals bread but she meets a goddess who tells her that her she can be beautiful and rich but that she will never find true love. She is told that her fate is now settled and cannot be changed, now that she has made her promise. I can't recall exactly what the promise was, but it had something to do with all that and her life does indeed turn out that way until a slave, mistaken for a general, kills the girls paramour.It is impossible to explain what is interesting and annoying about this film without skipping to the end. The middle is filled with quite pretty scenes of the king, the slave, the guy from the snow country, the girl, now grown to be a princess, and a few others. The blurb insists that it is the most beautiful film ever made but it is nowhere near that. It is, however, quite pretty. I won't get into how all the characters finish up, but I have to tell you what happens at the very end, so you might want to come back after you have seen the film.There follows, of course, a long series of complicated ups and downs for all the characters until the very end when our heroine seems to have found love indeed. Is the goddess very irritated? Peeved? Not at all. She shows up and blithely tells everyone that promises made to the gods are as fragile as any other and that fate can be changed. Now, I don't know about you, but if I had made some deal with a goddess for some unchangeable fate and then when all the suffering and struggle was over had that goddess tell me that, well, you know, it can all be changed, can't it? I would be seriously angry.I frankly don't know if this is a case of bad writing in which the author couldn't figure out a good ending so he just has the goddess, the moving power behind all of it, show up and say that your should forget all about it or if this is some sort of thing that makes sense to the Chinese way of thinking.In the Buddhist way of thinking there are gods and goddesses, demons and devils, but they aren't really very important and one can well have a form of Buddhism without any gods. Some say that Buddhism is atheistic, but i think goes a bit far. In the Chinese tradition it seems true that the gods are unreliable. Every Chinese village has a shrine to some local god who has the duty of making sure things go well for the village. If things don't do well they tear down the shrine and build a new one to some other god who will jolly well see to it that the village prospers and keeps out of trouble. Perhaps there is something of the sort at work here, I don't know. It is very odd.

I like the Chinese fantasy genre & "wu xia" martial arts films.. And I've really enjoyed some pretty cheesy plot lines and 'special' effects in Hong Kong movies from the 80's. Mr. Vampire and Chinese Ghost Story are some of my favorites.I allow foreign films a bit more of a break than films from my own culture. I generally assume I'm missing some of the symbolism and that the subtitles aren't giving me the best dialogue.I can respect and enjoy the seriousness of some of the plot points about honor/betrayal, etc. while still being able to laugh at some of the over the top elements.It was beautiful, gorgeous scenery, gorgeous shots, beautiful costuming. I thought the opening sequence with the little girl was worth seeing the movie for. The visual negatives was the horrible CGI which was way overused.The plot was a little weak, nothing we haven't seen done better in other movies.The actors were adequate. My favorite was Nic Tse as the villain. He was so entertaining I secretly rooted for him.On the whole I was disappointed, but mostly enjoyed it. However, I would only recommend it to people who like the genre and if you liked House of Flying Daggers- another beautiful movie that was very thin on plot.P.S. From people's comments apparently there were different versions for different US markets. I saw the one called "The Promise" that was about 1.5 hours.

When the world was young, laid a Kingdom between the Land of Snow and the Barbarian Territory where gods and men lived side by side and promises were lies. When the poor and starving orphaned girl Qingcheng meets the Goddess Manshen (Hong Chen), she accepts to become the wealthy beauty of beauties with the curse that she would lose every man she loves, unless three things happen: snow falls in the spring, time moves backwards and the dead comes back to life. Years later, the slave Kunlun (Dong-Kun Jang) helps the Great General Master of the Crimson Armor Guangming (Hiroyuki Sanada) to defeat a barbarian army with almost seven times more warriors, and Kunlun becomes his slave. When Guangming is wounded, he asks Kunlun to wear his armor and save the king from the cruel Duke of the North Wuhuan (Nicholas Tse) that put the Imperial City under siege with his army. However, Kunlun kills the king to save Princess Qingcheng (Cecilia Cheung) and promises her to never let her die. Princess Qingcheng falls in love for the man of the crimson armor that she believes is General Guangming. When Snow Wolf (Ye Liu) saves Kunlun and brings him to the Land of Snow, he recollects his childhood when his mother and sister were killed by the evil Wuhuan. Kunlun decides to return to the Kingdom to face Wuhuan and fight for his love."Wu Ji" is one of the most beautiful fantasies that I have ever seen, and I list this magnificent film among my favorites. The story has romance, magic, betrayal, loyalty, action, supported by a stunning cinematography, great screenplay, wonderful special effects and awesome direction and performances. This film is surprisingly underrated in IMDb, with and user rating of 5.6. Cecilia Cheung is one of the most beautiful actresses of cinema and is perfect in the role of the Beauty of Beauties. In the end, fate can be changed. My vote is nine.Title (Brazil): "A Promessa" ("The Promise")