The Promise

In Turkey on the eve of World War I, an Armenian medical student (Oscar Isaac) gets involved in a romantic triangle with his betrothed (Angela Sarafyan), a French-Armenian émigré (Charlotte Le Bon) and an American journalist (Christian Bale)—and soon all of them are caught up in the Ottoman Empire’s systematic program to exterminate its ethnic Armenians. If you’ve been waiting for the Great Epic of the Armenian Genocide, here it is. Directed by Terry George (who performed a similar service in 2004’s Hotel Rwanda) and written by him and Robin Swicord, it’s engrossing, moving and appalling, carrying us with indelible stately sweep from the exotic elegance of upper-class Constantinople to the dusty horror of desert massacres. James Cromwell supplies a cameo as U.S. ambassador Henry Morgenthau. J.L.