31 Oct 2016

The promise gets political.

The Promise is a new film starring Christian Bale, Oscar Isaac and Charlotte Le Bon about the Armenian genocide that occurred between 1915 and  1918.



 Based on the trailer it seems to a story of love and survival amongst a terrible tragedy. Oscar bait.
Now I know little about the film or it's story or the historical event that this film is set in, however, this film is interesting as according to The Independent  as of 25 October 2016, there had been only three public screenings of this film, but IMDB had 55,126 1-star ratings? Now that seems a bit skew-wif to me.

I checked IMDB today and noted that as of today there were 89,450 ratings for this film. Of which, 62% (56,061)  were a rating of 1. That seems pretty off base to me.  I checked the reviews and found this gem:

"You are currently falling for the Jewish trickery into believing these kind of propeganda movies. I didn't watch the Movie nor the Trailer, call me patriotic or an idiot, i do not care.

What i do care about is the History lessons from my very own Great Grandfather telling me about the Armenian Tricks trying to backstab us with Russian support in order to expand there clay in the end of the Ottoman Empire. We Turks did not fall for this meme and WILL NOT FALL for heathen tricerkys just as these."

That review was titled "Sh#tty zionist tricks".



Now, IMDB has had criticism in the past for their rating system to be skewed by fake reviews from the studios, but I have never seen anything like this.  There really does seem to be some sort of political agenda here to discredit this film. Unfortunately for those who are trying to discredit this film they are only drawing attention to it and giving it more publicity.

Good!

I do not know much about the history of these events but I do object to some sort of clumsy overt attempt to discredit it for political reasons. If it is a bad film then that will come out in due course. The audience should, and will decide!

Personally, and I know this will seem ironic, but I rarely read reviews before seeing a film. I like to go in with an open mind and see the film with no preconceptions. If you want good sites to look at whether a film is tracking I recommend  Rotten Tomatoes  and Metacritic . These two sites can give you a good indication of how a film is faring. But, don't discount IMDB, it is a great site, and you can find marvellous reviews and information there.  I love IMDB, and this won't stop me using it.

Here is a link to the trailer so you can make your own mind up.