An absolute waste of money

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Though released in 1996, oh my goodness "La Promesse" feels like it could be a response to the current events of today.The film tells the story of a young man who helps his father bring illegal immigrants into Belgium and then proceed to rip them off. When one of the immigrants dies in an accident, the father covers up the death even as the man's wife, recently brought over with their baby to join him, begins to investigate what happened to him. The young man must decide for himself where his own feelings of what is right morally begin and his loyalty and fear of punishment end."La Promesse" is a film that puts faces to the abstract idea of illegal immigrants and reminds us that these are people just trying to better their lives in ways that are available to them. I of course know that the many ignorant Americans who slot all immigrants into the same category (terrorists) as an excuse to keep them out of our country would never see a movie like this, but how I wish there was some way to force them to think of immigrants not en masse, but as individual people with personalities, needs, desires, worries, and fears of their own.Grade: A

A promise. What does that word mean to you? How far would you go to keep a promise you made to someone? Would you betray someone close to you to keep that promise? 'La Promesse' is a brilliant debut by the Belgian duo, Dardenne brothers, showing a 15-year old boy's brave efforts to keep his promise. The movie is about morality and responsibility. It's easy for one to blame their bad upbringing or company for their immoral ways, but it takes real courage and a good conscience to rise above those ways and become a better human being.With hand-held cameras, simple narrative, inexperienced actors and no background score, Dardenne brothers' bold approach is quite refreshing and realistic; they place us right there, in suburban Belgium, where the story is unfolding. The story is stirring, and the acting is quite incredible, especially by Jeremie Renier; their eyes speak a lot.I liked the way they handled superstitions and rituals related to it; it was darkly amusing.The final scene is quite uplifting and heartbreaking. I loved the way they ended the movie; it keeps you pondering over a few things.

The first ten minutes were not exactly promising! I remember thinking, another hand-held camera job, this time set in the backstreets of a Belgian industrial city - yet another rite of passage tale - unprepossessing youth steals a pensioner's handbag from a car in the garage where he works, while his father, a squint-eyed, piggy-faced fatty, runs a racket fleecing illegal immigrants from the Balkans and Africa. However what is wholly remarkable about "La Promesse" is the way it slowly sucks the viewer into a realisation that this is not just a piece of documentary-style realism but an uncompromisingly honest study of character and conscience. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that no other film new to British TV last year moved or excited me as much. The performance by Jeremie Renier as the youth Igor is a tour-de-force. He is on screen for practically the entire film and it is his search for integrity after a dying African (one of his father's "clients") exacts from him a promise to assist his wife and baby, that forms the work's core. Igor has to come to terms with alienating his father, who, although a selfish and dishonest brute, has real affection for his son; parental/filial warmth is displayed when they drunkenly sing together in a cafe. But what the film finally says with such devestating certainly is that even integrity is something that can go unappreciated and ignored by the one towards whom it is intended. The ending speaks of a terrible price paid for redemption.

This film was a gem and I look forward to seeing "Rosetta" by the same filmmakers, although I missed it back in '99.The story has a gritty documentary feel in its depiction of lower-class immigrant experience in Belgium, but nonetheless is dramatically compelling because of the tension between the father and the son. I haven't seen this side of modern European urban life treated in film this well.