The Promise simply turns this historical tragedy into mere background noise for a flimsy romantic triangle.
A macho celebration of fighting for “freedom” because someone else told you to, devoid of any acknowledgement of the irony of that ideology.
It shrugs off the bigger questions about Iranian politics its first half appears to raise, falling back instead on a gestalt of the eternal, Kafkaesque regime, wherever the viewer may find it.
It functions as a message-movie slasher film or, rather, a hot-button Passion of the Christ, replete with the participation of that film’s Jesus himself, Jim Caviezel.
The war between America and the Middle East is in full metaphoric force in Vadim Perelman’s ridiculous eviction melodrama.
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