Despite its powerful cast and $100m budget, ‘The Promise’ has received mixed reviews, although perhaps the message that its backers were aiming to project gets through.
Peters Travers from Rolling Stone wrote: “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.”
But it’s the audience reaction which has been more telling and triggered more controversy.
Media reported that in October 2016, after only three small pre-re- lease screenings, the IMDb website said that around 86,000 people had rated the film with heavily polarised results. IMDb said that 55,126 voters had given the film a one star and 30,639 had given the film 10 stars.
In an interview with the Sunday Times Mr George, director of ‘The Promise’ said that he thought that the Turkey-funded ‘The Ottoman Lieu- tenant’ had been commissioned and produced to derail the impact of his film. It focuses on the same historical era and also features a strong cast, including Ben Kingsley and Michiel Huisman. It painted the killings of Armenians as the accidental consequence of war.
Like its rival film ‘The Promise’, ‘The Ottoman Lieutenant’ also attracted equal measures of praise and disgust from online audience reviewers.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 325, published on April 17 2017)
