As the film opens, a starving young girl stealing food from battlefield corpses is approached by a goddess, who proffers a deal: As an adult, she can be the most beautiful, coveted woman in the world, but she will always lose any man she truly loves. The girl agrees, and is next seen as grown-up Cecilia Cheung, the Emperor's concubine and a practiced, heartless manipulator of men. Meanwhile, the Emperor's forces enter battle under famed general Hiroyuki Sanada, who quickly learns that Dong-Kun Jang, a slave he bought as cannon fodder, has an inhuman, impossible gift for speed. After winning the battle via a great deal of the kind of cartoony, over-the-top CGI silliness that packed Kung Fu Hustle, Sanada makes Jang his personal attendant and sends him off to encounter the Emperor and Cheung, setting the stage for a complicated love triangle involving mistaken identities, a magical assassin, a lost country, a great deal of lush pageantry, and a thoroughly fairy-tale-esque aesthetic.
Like so many wu xia films, The Promise naturally expresses its mythic qualities through stunning visuals, breathtaking costuming, and a great deal of action, and it adds in Kaige's Ridley Scott-like fondness for vistas full of floating, drifting objects, from feathers to flower petals to snow. But the resonance goes much deeper, thanks to a compelling story that uses notions of feudal honor, class barriers, and destiny to temper the characters' passion; the principals' respect for and obligations to each other make the story far more compelling and tragic than simple romantic competition could. For Kaige, The Promise can't exactly be called a return to form—it's more a return to Hero and House Of Flying Daggers director Zhang Yimou's form. Either way, it's still glorious.
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