Director Terry George brings to this story a special gift, honed in his Hotel Rwanda (2004), for choreographing the chaos of civil collapse, and the three stars serve him well.

| Apr 17, 2020

The first major representation of the Armenian genocide boasts solid acting but falls short of the mark by a hokey, old-fashioned romance.

| Nov 20, 2017

Terry George ... proved with Hotel Rwanda that he can tackle the wrenching subject of genocide with thrilling cinematic results. A wonderful cast adds no-fail polish.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 5, 2017

As one might expect, the horrors and the normalisation of same are deftly handled, even when the dialogue is overloaded with historical and political details.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 14, 2017

It's a handsome film and George manages to keep the genocide in focus with shots of the Turks herding long lines of refugees across the desert expanses. But the full horror is kept at one remove.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 14, 2017

With its sugary soft-focus, treacle-toned cinematography, over-masticated fake Turkish accents and cloying love triangle device, this is film that delivers more empty calories than historical sustenance.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 30, 2017

The sets look phoney. The relentlessly sun-dappled skies are naff. The "action" lacks momentum and Tom Hollander's eyeliner is mad.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 28, 2017

A terrible event very few are taught about, absorbingly retold.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 28, 2017

A catastrophically earnest drama.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Apr 27, 2017

The film catches the dreadful speed with which smashed windows give way to death camps, while individual scenes have a grim power.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 27, 2017

The film is absorbing enough to watch in its own 온라인카지노추천 mini-series-like way but it also feels strangely melodramatic. It doesn't help that the dialogue is often so arch.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 26, 2017

Undeniably effective, in its own blunt way, this deserves credit for shining light on a crime that's - unbelievably and controversially - still denied to this day.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 24, 2017

A sprawling, '60s-style epic with just enough political intrigue to prop up the occasionally wobbly romantic triangle formed by Oscar Isaac, Charlotte Le Bon, and an uncharacteristically ill-fitting Christian Bale.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 21, 2017

You have to swallow some inadequacies to get the most out of The Promise. It is appealingly photographed and boasts some stunning location work, yet it's also saddled with the tone of a biblical epic, invisibly watermarked with the label important.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 21, 2017

Because there's no time for these three to develop as impassioned characters, all this soap opera tedium does is devalue the real human catastrophe unspooling alongside it.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Apr 21, 2017

Instead of a fiery romance, The Promise's love story manages only a low boil.

| Apr 21, 2017

The Promise is drenched in production value and replete with ravishing shots of sunrises and sunsets, but it's in the scenes of fleeing, of battle, and of horrendous loss that the film is at its most effective.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 21, 2017

The Promise benefits from strong performances, but the lack of needed context regarding the Armenian genocide dampens its full historical relevance.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 21, 2017

Director Terry George delivers a scalding dramatization of the Ottoman Empire's 1915 genocidal annihilation of its Armenian citizens, and then dulls it with a soapy, invented love triangle.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 21, 2017

Noble intentions can't disguise their epic failure: The love story fails to ignite.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 21, 2017