Uma Promessa

Tis a classic story of forbidden love told throughout the ages from ancient Greece up to the present day.

I enjoyed it as much as it goes, with excellent performances from the cast. I would have liked to have seen more of the young theatre talent Shannon Tarbet, who plays the initial girlfriend of the protagonist.

I thought that to update it for the modern audience an odd plot twist would have been good, especially for the men who might find this story somewhat ponderous.

A must for those who like Jane Austen, male viewers may fall asleep!

I watched "A Promise" by accident - totally unprepared, and not even knowing what I was about to watch. But the fact that I watched it to the end already says a lot, since the film is not your typical shoot-them-up-superhero type of entertainment.

A Promise is essentially a love story set in times just before the WWI. It moves at its own, unhurried pace, but gives us plenty to observe and enjoy. While thoughtful, it manages to create suspense and drama without ever becoming sappy or boring. The story is inspiring, and screenplay well written. Besides great photography, and great story, all the actors were marvelous.

It is rare for me to be impressed by a film a day after I watched it, but A Promise achieved exactly that. It is refined, honest and deep enough to keep one engaged and only the most jaded will be unimpressed. Maybe there was a thing or two I would've done differently, but even with those imperfections, it stands out as an enviable work of seventh art.

Obviously, if you were looking for Ironman 12, or Halloween 13, you came to the wrong place.

Perfect costuming and set decor. Alan Rickman is splendid and Rebecca Hall has won me over. But. The camera-work is negatively strange and distracting at times. The sudden zoom ins and (tragically trendy) shaky cam, not my cup of tea. I wish my remote control had a stabilizer button.

It's a good movie. There's the desire and the betrayal in a certain way, but there's no action, no passion and it continues till the end of the film. It could have been better.

Maybe I'm being charitable here, but I felt the "lack of chemistry" between the leads that so many criticise here could have been intentional, a trope for repressed emotion or the etiquette of the time. Yes, there are some major flaws, some clunking (such as the keyboard-sniffing, rat capture and of course, the damp squib of an ending), but there's also a lot to enjoy, particularly if you are a Rickman fan. But yes, some more historical context would have been good, it feels like an afterthought, and perhaps a deeper examination of whether the affair was set up from the start by an impotent husband.