THE PROMISE : Tuesday 27th June 2017.

'THE PROMISE' which I saw last week is Directed and Co-Written by Terry George whose previous credits include 'Reservation Road' and 'Hotel Rwanda'. Here he turns his attention to the last days of the Ottoman Empire and the Armenian Genocide, which occurred between 1915 and 1922, marking the beginning of one hundred years of modern genocide by launching the world into a cycle of violence and denial that has resulted in millions of lives lost, destroyed and displaced. The film Premiered at TIFF in early September last year, was released in the US in late April, and has been a Box Office bomb taking just US$9M of its US$90M budget outlay. The film has however, been praised for its historical accuracy and for not downplaying the enormity of the lesser known Armenian Genocide that took place.

This is the story of Mikael (Oscar Isaac), a small village dwelling apothecary and an aspiring gifted medical student who has designs on graduating from medical school in the big city and turning his chosen career path to good use back in his Armenian home village of Sirun, in the south-east of the Ottoman Empire. In order to fund his way through medical school and graduate as a fully fledged Doctor, he betroths himself to the daughter of a wealthy neighbour in the village for a dowry of 400 gold coins. This will give him the fees necessary to continue his training at the Imperial Medical Academy in Constantinople and fund his living expenses for the two years he is away. And so Michael leaves the comfort of Sirun and heads to the big city, Constantinople, fresh faced, energetic and fully of hope for his future.

Upon arriving in Constantinople, he meets Emre (Marwan Kenzari) on his first day at the Medical Academy. Emre is the son of a high ranking Turkish official, and also a medical student, although only because he wanted to dodge the draft into the Turkish Army, much to the chagrin of his father.

Through Mikael's wealthy Uncle, he is introduced to Ana (Charlotte Le Bon), an Armenian woman raised and educated in Paris and from a village not too far way from his own. Ana is romantically involved with American Reporter for the Associated Press Chris Myers (Christian Bale), and the two share a co-dependence upon each other - he for his reporting and she for her artistic sketches of his reported subject matter. With the threat of war looming, Myers is in Constantinople observing and reporting on the German influence in Turkey, and the mounting unrest amongst certain factions of the population. Myers has clout as a famous and highly regarded photo-journalist dedicated to exposing political truth.

Fairly quickly it becomes evident that there is a chemistry between Mikael and Ana, and soon their affections for each other become apparent to Chris. All of this starts to unfold as international tensions begin to boil over with the onset of WWI, and it becomes clear that Turkey intends to side with Germany. As compulsory conscription looms ever closer into the Ottoman Army, Mikael manages to avoid being signed up with Emre's help using the clout of his father's position to secure a medical student exemption.

However, Mikael's avoidance of the conscript is short-lived, as he soon discovers that his Uncle has been imprisoned during the dissident round-ups of April 1915. In his attempts to save his Uncle by bribing an official with his remaining stash of gold coins, Mikael is his himself detained, and sent off to a prison labour camp. We then fast forward six months to see the Nazi-like led camp and those prisoners doing the hard labour by laying train tracks across rocky mountain terrain for their captors, the Turks.

Eventually, Mikael manages to escape as a result of a fortunate occurrence involving weeping sticks of dynamite, a prisoner willing to give his life, and the close proximity to the ensuing explosion of many Turkish soldiers. Finally, Mikael makes his way back to his village, only to find it a shadow of its former self with the Turks having turned violently on their Armenian fellows. His parents are still alive, but are now poverty stricken having been robbed of all their wealth and valuables by the marauding Turkish Army. His mother persuades him to proceed with his promise to marry Maral (Angela Sarafyan) the girl he is betrothed to despite Mikael professing his love for Ana in Constantinople. But with the passing of time and their changed circumstances he doesn't even know if Ana still lives. And so he goes through with the marriage in a hurried ceremony in the mountains where they live in a log cabin built by his father as sleeping quarters for hired farm hands. Soon enough Maral falls pregnant, but suffering from sickness Mikael takes his wife back to the village to be tended for by his mother and father. There he learns that Ana and Chris are at a Red Cross station close by, and so he leaves to seek their help in securing an escape from the ever increasing threat to their lives at the hands of the Turks.

The Red Cross are managing escape missions for orphans across the mountains and to a nearby port where passage by ship is planned to take them to safe haven. They head back to Sirun to retrieve Mikael's family en route to the port, only to be greeted by a bloodbath of massacred bodies laid strewn across a riverbank on the outskirts of the village. Among them is the slain bodies of Mikael's father and Maral, with the unborn child ripped from her stomach. His mother is still alive.  Mikael's grieving is interrupted by passing Turkish soldiers who give chase.

The group split with Chris leading them off astray so enabling Mikael and Ana  to escape with the carriage load of young orphans. Chris is however, soon overcome and captured. He produces official papers but these are dismissed by the soldiers who take him back to Constantinople where he is imprisoned for spying - a crime punishable by death. Emre, now an officer in the Ottoman Army, visits Chris in his cell and pleads with him to sign a confession to save his life, but Chris has firm beliefs and staunch moral standards and rips up the document - sealing his fate.

At the eleventh hour, American Ambassador Henry Morgenthau (James Cromwell) gets involved with his Turkish counterpart and negotiates Chris's release, allowing for him to be deported to Malta. Emre however, was involved in contacting Morgenthau covertly, and is found out by more higher ranking officials, and consequently is shot by firing squad. Upon arriving in Malta, Chris boards the French Navy cruiser 'Guichen' under the captaincy of Admiral Fournet (Jean Reno) as it launches for the Ottoman coastline.

Meanwhile Ana and Mikael encounter a large group of Armenian refugees heading into the mountains to escape the advancing Turks. Armed with limited guns and makeshift weapons, the refugees are determined that they will fight to the death. The resistance fought off the advancing Turks for fifty-three days in all on mount Musa Dagh until Allied warships, most notably the French 3rd squadron in the Mediterranean sighted the survivors, just as ammunition and food provisions were running short. French and British ships, beginning with the Guichen, evacuated 4,200 men, women and children from Musa Dagh, amidst heavy artillery fire from the Ottoman Army, which Chris, Mikael, Ana and the orphans all come under attack from, and not without casualty. The warships then transported them to safety in Port Said in Egypt.

This film has a strong compelling story to tell and its an important one, that is still controversially denied by the Turkish people to this day. Therefore, all credit to Terry George for bringing this story to the big screen - it is just a shame that so many film goers have chosen to elect with their feet and their money to stay away from the cinemas, or watch something else. Maybe its because this tragic story of the Armenian Genocide which claimed one and a half million lives is wrapped up in candy floss and sugar coated in a melodramatic, elongated love triangle that detracts from the subject matter  of real historical and undeniable importance. The production values are strong and with the principle cast of Bale and Isaac and up & comer Le Bon, we could have expected a lot more, but here the sum of the parts is not greater than the whole. Twenty minutes less running time, an abbreviated love triangle and more about the atrocities (think 'Schindler's List' here) and we'd be talking about a different film altogether.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

BASTILLE DAY : Friday 13th May 2016.

'BASTILLE DAY' which I saw on Friday evening, for the historians amongst us, will know the significance of 14th July to the French - for it is Bastille Day, marking the date in 1789 when troops stormed The Bastille - a medieval fortress and prison in Paris. It was an important event marking effectively the beginning of the French Revolution. It wasn't until 1880 however, that it officially became a national public holiday, and has as such been celebrated every year since then with great fan fare. So, history lesson over, what about this film which mirrors recent tragic terrorist events in Paris with the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo Offices bombing and that of a Jewish supermarket, and then the more widespread and tragic Stade de France attacks in St. Denis and the Bataclan Theatre attack in November 2015. The similarities with this films central theme are inevitable, but in reality sheer coincidence as filming took place before those events in late 2014, with the movie in the can by Christmas that year. All that said, 'Bastille Day' is Directed by James Watkins, and stars Idris Elba in the main lead doing all he can to prove that he might be a shoe-in for James Bond when Daniel Craig sips his last shaken not stirred Martini.

The films open up on the eve of Bastille Day, with the city well advanced in its celebratory preparations for the national holiday. Working the streets is an American pick-pocket Michael Mason (Richard Madden) doing a very nice job of stealing wallets, smart phones, expensive watches and passports from unsuspecting tourists and passers-by out on a summer's evening enjoying the festivities. With his evenings stash he makes his way to his 'fence' and he exchanges his evenings collection for cash, and then slinks away into the night for a quiet refreshment in a nearby Cafe. Across the city from his offices overlooking the Eiffel Tower is CIA Agent Sean Briar (Idris Elba) pondering what the next 24 hours will bring as the city swings into full on party mode.

Siting there minding his own business in quiet reflection, Mason spies a distraught woman, Zoe Neville (Charlotte Le Bon) with a carrier bag - she removes her blond wig and stuffs it into the bag, and holds her head in her hands sobbing. An easy target thinks Mason, and while she sits on a step not paying attention he's in there, bag removed and on his way. In a side street out of view he rummages through the bag to see what he can find - a cuddly toy bear, the blond wig, a mobile phone, and other sundry paraphernalia. Nothing much - he stuffs the bear back in and the wig, holds onto the phone and makes his way back to the Cafe precinct from whence he came, depositing the bag in the garbage bin as he goes. Within a few seconds, the garbage bin explodes and the street is strewn with debris, and bodies - four dead! Mason gets to his feet, grabs the phone and makes off, stunned by what just happened, and not before being caught on CCTV. Within no time, Briar is on the case, the prime suspect in this terror attack is identified, tracked down and brought in for questioning but not before a roof top foot chase that comes to rest in a busy market - the like of which you seen in a hundred other movies of this ilk, but it is reasonably well handled nonetheless.

Cue the unofficial safe house interrogation room and Briar and Mason are nose to nose with Briar coming on strong as the tough take no prisoners kinda guy, and Mason as the in out of his depth WTF just happened I'm just a wannabe Med student trying to make a fast buck to pay my way through college low life loser. Pretty soon, the city goes into lock down and Briar realises that Mason is probably telling the truth and he is just a patsy caught up in this mess unawares. So Briar decides to use the pick-pocket to track down Zoe using the phone that Mason stole, and which is all they have to go on. And so begins another hunt, another chase and more truths revealed that only add to this web of intrigue as the two unlikely partners now chase all over Paris.

While all of this is going on Briar's superior officer Karen Dacre (Kelly Reilly) is monitoring the unfolding scenario back at CIA HQ in downtown Paris and is in contact with long term friend and counterpart in the French authorities Victor Gamieux (Jose Garcia). He has a hidden agenda and enlists the RAPID Team (a seemingly elite  special forces arm of the police) with his full authority to track down the alleged terrorist and Zoe, for fear that their plan may come undone - and the boys from RAPID are in on the game with a huge pay day coming their way if their rigorously detailed plans come off. Its up to Briar, Mason and Neville to uncover the further plot twists as they go, playing the inevitable cat & mouse game across Paris as the hunters becomes the hunted, and then vice versa.

Meanwhile the RAPID guys are inciting unrest amongst the masses and manufacturing scenes of police brutality that they post all over social media encouraging unrest, rioting in the streets, looting, random acts of violence and holding the authorities to ransom on the day of celebration. They use hashtags to get their messages across whilst creating a smokescreen for their plan to be executed - to rob the national bank of US$500M in plain sight and with the full authority from the government, represented here by Gamieux. But of course they didn't count on the machismo of Briar and the sleight of hand of Mason to thwart their plans when they least expect it, and with the help of thousands of Parisians who help turn the tables unexpectedly.

Of course, before they get to this point, there's more shoot 'em up, beat 'em down bravado in the back of a truck, which again, you've seen a hundred times before, but also reasonably well handled. In the end, good overcomes evil, a few more people get killed - both good and bad, and the mastermind behind all of this gets locked up, and the aspiring Med student decides that a job in the CIA may not be such a bad option after all, given his one and only successful track record in bringing down a major crime, capturing the king pin and preventing a shit storm on Bastille Day.

On the positive, the film moves along at a good pace and for its short running time of 92 minutes you won't get bored and it is entertaining enough. But, this is everything you would expect it to be - formulaic, plot holes that you could drive a truck through, implausible story and it really contains nothing you have not seen before in Bourne and Bond (roof top foot chase sequences and close quartered hand to hand combat), 'V for Vendetta' (a masked population rising up against authority driven by one man) and 'Die Hard' (create an intricate smokescreen to commit a robbery). You don't need to see this on the big screen, and can easily wait for the DVD and Bluray release.
  

-Steve, at Odeon Online-