A Film Staring Batman and Poe Dameron Should Not be This Unengaging
Ok, I may have twisted the facts a tiny bit there, but my general point still stands. Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac are two of the most compelling actors working today, so a film starring the both of them about the tragic events of the 1915 Armenian Genocide should not be something you’d call dull and unexciting. Enter The Promise, a well-intentioned but ultimately flat and unfocused historical epic that frustratingly plays things way too safe. It takes awful real life events, which are a (ahem) promising set up for a historical drama, and disappointingly dulls it down to a bland and cliched love story.
The Promise plays somewhat like a Historical Drama greatest hits package. Oscar Isaac is our dashing hero Mikael, an Armenian medical student who arrives in Constantinople at the end of the Ottoman Empire to further his studies. He meets Ana (Charlotte Le Bon), a French-Armenian dancer with whom he begins to fall for. This despite reluctantly having a wife at home and Ana having her husband, American reporter Chris (Christian Bale). Mikael and Ana attempt to kick things off together, but the looming outbreak of war and the brutal discrimination of the Armenian people complicates matters significantly.
The Promise is certainly polished on a surface level. Sweeping vistas and beautifully detailed costume and set designs liven up the screen, making it a nice feast for the senses. There’s an impressive sense of scale that makes it feel almost like a biblical epic (you can see where that near $100 million budget went). However, these surface pleasures can’t disguise the relative emptiness underneath. Its main problem is that it can never truly decide what it wants to be. One minute, it’s a historical drama. The next, it’s a love story. Then it’s a political commentary. Then it’s a war film. There’s nothing particularly wrong with juggling all of these. The best historical epics discuss many an idea and develop them in great detail. The problem here is that there is a lack of purpose and focus that ultimately dulls its impact. The war scenes lack urgency and energy, instead just passing you by on the screen. A forest chase towards the end of the second act livens things up momentarily, but it’s not quite enough. For a film about something as harrowing as a genocide of thousands of people, you leave The Promise oddly unfazed.
The angle that director Terry George (Hotel Rwanda) seems to settle on is that of the love triangle between Isaac, Bale and Le Bon. We’re apparently supposed to buy this romance being the driving force for the whole film despite Le Bon and Isaac only really having a couple of fleeting scenes that actually touch on this romance. They have ok chemistry, but they are given little to actually work with, so you don’t feel much of it. The whole thing is played out too ponderously and too safely. Like a Michael Buble album, there is something there, but hard to actually care about it. It’s a shame because the cast does put in solid performances. Isaac is as watchable as he always is, and elevates the film significantly (which is saying something) with a genuinely sincere performance. Star on the rise Le Bon is similarly a delight to watch. The only weak link in the cast is, surprisingly, Bale who brings his usual brooding intensity to the role. However, his character seems quite underdeveloped, and he isn’t given enough space and screen time for the intensity to really breath.
For a film called The Promise, The Promise is anything but promising. It squanders its talented cast and some mildly impressive visuals and churns it into a messy, dull bore that has all the impact of milquetoast tea. In fact, the only promise this film will give you is 2 hours and 15 minutes of quality sleep.