Lumsdal Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Celia A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

pensman Most Americans are most likely unfamiliar with the creation of Israel after WW II. This series offers some historical perspective to what is usually seen as a single point of view: Jewish refugees trying to establish a homeland after surviving the Nazi death camps (the good); the Arabs (Palestinians) trying to keep them out (the bad); and the British troops trying to maintain a tenuous peace (the ugly). As usual, the real story is various shades of grey. This series is presented somewhat through the eyes of Erin Matthews, a twenty year old who is spending part of her gap year--year between finishing what we think of as high school and starting college--with her friend Eliza who is a British Jew who returns to Israel to begin her national service. Erin discovers before leaving England her grandfather's diary which tells his story as a sergeant in the British army serving in Palestine during the 1940's. The story moves back and forth between the story of her grandfather, Len Matthews, and her experiences in Israel as she reads and tries to follow through on his story as related in the diary. In this telling it is made clear that the Jewish refugees are intent on creating a homeland regardless of the cost in life to the Palestinians or British troops. As a result, Len Matthews who began his service in sympathy with the Jews finds his feelings change as a result of his experiences. And Erin also finds that in the present day the assumptions she has been brought up with are now being challenged by experience. I personally found Len's story quite compelling and in part due to the fine acting of Christian Cooke as Len; and while Erin's story is also arresting, Claire Foy's Erin is a somewhat irritating and an unsympathetic character. Almost obnoxious. However, the large cast does an excellent job and there is no way you can watch one segment of the series and not feel compelled to watch the subsequent episodes. While I find the story well balanced in trying to show the larger picture, I am sure some will be upset to find that the Israelis are not depicted as the completely good guy underdogs of history. But if you want a better understanding of the current unrest in the Middle East then this is both an entreating and illuminating series.

yoahmed400 Astonishing is all I can say, I fail to find the words to describe this piece of work. Maybe being an Arab who's heart breaks in two every time he hears about his neighboring country and how they were left helpless to struggle and still are effects me more, maybe thats why the movie got to me so deeply. I wouldn't want to take the credit off the producer nor the cast or anyone who participated in this magnificent work good job. This is a must see series. People (ofcourse I know which sort of people) will start to take us into the small details of events and how the IDF does that and doesn't do that, I believe the picture is clear for those who have hearts and minds to see with.

D Damen For a person who has been to the places that Kosminsky had shot, this piece of work is certainly worth the praise and had pushed me to write my first review on IMDb.This outstanding piece of work, especially in photography and editing, indeed moves different audiences. The analogy between the past and the presence presents a different approach to seeing the Palestinian cause, especially from a foreigner's point of view.The director is first a true historian, then a talented artist and finally an outstanding director. I sent this series to all of my family and friends as a must-watch.

Guy I had reservations about THE PROMISE. After all, this is a four-part, eight-hour long miniseries, taking part in two time periods about the Israel-Palestine conflict. This tricky issue tends to be reduced to propaganda by partisans from both sides. Unfortunately Peter Kosminsky is such a partisan and he delivers a rant in the form of melodrama, not helped by tired direction, a thin script and poor history.The story is partly set in 2005 and partly in the period 1945-8. In 2005 a young British student named Erin finds her grandfather's diary. Through the diary we follow Len, her grandfather, as he serves with the British Army in Palestine from 1945 to 1948. This becomes significant as Erin travels to Israel with a friend and finds herself trying to fulfil a promise her grandfather made all those years ago.Kosminsky's pitch is essentially ethnic Jewish self-criticism in which he castigates the Israelis for the bloody way in which they founded and have maintained their state. Unfortunately this means that he isn't really very interested in either the Palestinians or the British. The Palestinians appear only as victims and exercise no agency of their own. Erin/Len largely act as eyes for the viewer. By far the most interesting parts concern the Israeli family of Erin's friend and their internal dynamics (grandfather is an ex-Irgun, the parents are good liberal Israelis, the son is a former soldier working for peace, the daughter has just been conscripted for the IDF). Erin (apparently based on Kosminsky's daughters - God help them) is an ignorant slag who manages to sleep with most of the cast for no discernible reason, who is often bafflingly obtuse (demanding driving lessons from a Palestinian when her epilepsy means she isn't allowed to drive) and spends most of her time in a sullen pout. She's also a bit of an idiot - when the Israeli's try to bulldoze a Palestinian house she chains herself and a young child to a pillar inside. Endangering kids much? The whole thing is then rendered instantly facile when her Israeli chum promptly gets out a pair of wire- cutters and breaks the chain before taking her outside. Much of her time is spent prompting people to provide long, boring exposition in case the audience are idiots. Incidentally her epilepsy almost never features in the story and serves no purpose.Len meanwhile is a such a mass of contradictions as to not exist as a proper character. Supposedly a veteran of Arnhem, a tough Para and a working class lad from Leeds, he is played with a doe eyed passivity, broken only by moments of shrill anger and unconvincing heroics (all the combat scenes are silly and exist only to liven up the trailers). His loyalties are supposed to be tested but really he just rolls with the flow, transferring his loyalties to whichever side (Arab or Jew) has received the most victim points that episode. Rather than bother to build a character Kosminsky just manufactures scenes every so often where Brits are beastly to Arabs/Jews so that Len can swan in and save them so that we know he's a hero. Probably his finest moment is when finds his Jewish girlfriend tarred and feathered and promptly decides that what a traumatised woman needs is...yet another painfully ugly sex scene.The script makes very little pretence to be even handed, picking (rightly)on every Israeli fault whilst ignoring Arab ones. Both Len and Erin go on a learning journey from pro-Israeli/Jewish to anti- Israeli/Jewish (as opposed to pro-Palestinian/Arab). In Erin's timeline this works OK as she meets the Jewish religious settlers (not very nice people), sees the humiliating checkpoint system, the chronic discrimination against Palestinians and discovers the results of the ethnic cleansing from 1948. However this method works very badly for Len's story. So you get the arrival of the Holocaust survivors, the King David Hotel bombing, the Affair of the Sergeants and the ethnic cleansing of Arab villages in 1948. But there is little else but these big events and as a result the whole narrative is very jumpy, with no sense of the passage of time.A lot of the problems are down to the ham-handedness of the direction and deeply mediocre work by the DP. There is no feel for the period 1945-8 and the impression is often of children playing dress-up. Many scenes are risibly bad with pride of place going to a terrible exploding CGI door that flies straight at the viewer like one of those gimmick shots from a 3D movie. There is also precious little tension, mood- building, immediacy or physicality. Moments that ought to be shocking or scary or blood-pumping are instead flat. There is also a tendency to manufacture fake drama, as when Len leaves his unit (who are under attack) to rescue the son of his Arab friend, escorts him several miles and then abandons him 100 feet from safety whereupon the kid is promptly shot by a sniper. It makes no sense and is utterly contrived. Incidentally, Len then returns to his unit, with several hours having passed, to discover that...literally nothing has changed.There are numerous historical oddities. For instance, Len is a Sergeant but appears to have no officer and is casually let into high-ranking meetings. For instance, the impression is given that Israel started the 1948 war and that it was a purely Israeli-Palestinian fight. For instance, Kosminsky's belief that the use of collective punishment by the Brits against Jews and by Israelis against Palestinians is unique (it's as old as time).I don't have a side in the Israel-Palestine dispute and frankly don't care. My interest was largely in the British.This is poor history, poor writing and poor drama.