An emotional, dramatic, and very powerful film, “The Promise” will have you in tears by the end of the 134 minute running time, but it will also make you think about the similarities between those events and what is going on in the world today.

The film stars Oscar Isaac as Mikael Bogoshian, an Armenian medical student from a small village that travels to Constantinople the capital of Turkey to become a doctor, but is engage to be married before he leaves.

Bogoshian falls in love with an French Armenian woman, played by Charlotte Le Bon, named Ana Khesarian who is working as a dancing instructor for Mikael’s uncle’s family.

She becomes romantically involved with an American news writer reporting on the war named Chris Myers played by Christian Bale, the story takes place before and during the Armenian genocide in Turkey.

The film is beautifully shot with extensive scenes of the mountain sides, small villages, and oceans, also the special effects makes it seem as if it truly was the early 1900s.

The historically accuracy of the film is best left for the historians to asses, but the film does well in portraying the clothing styles and vehicles of the era.

The choice of actors is what makes this film better, especially Isaac’s character who shows great emotion throughout the film.

Although some may question the choice of casting a Hispanic lead actor instead of a Armenian one, in this instance the casting choice works well.

One of the only drawback of the film is the romantic triangle story between Bale’s, Le Bon’s, and Isaac’s character. Which seem to be tacked on just to make the movie more appealing to audiences, but it felt like it just slowed the movie down at times.

Overall it was a good film and for some it will be a learning experience to something that is rarely written in history books and many still deny it happened at all. Hopefully this movie can shine some light into the history of the Armenian community and the struggles they survived.