"Comparisons between Terry George’s new film The Promise and his 2004 award-winner Hotel Rwanda are evident from the outset. This director, who is fond of telling intimate stories set against the sweep of history, reprises the formula here, again finding the human drama amid a modern genocidal atrocity. If the formula doesn’t work as well this time out, it may just be a matter of the pattern getting too creaky and predictable. Yet the film and its harrowing depiction of the too-little-examined genocide of the Armenian Turks – an extermination at the beginning of World War I that the country of Turkey will not admit to this day – is a respectable offering. Even if the idea of giving focus to a romantic triangle as the narrative lure for a broader depiction of ethnic cleansing is a disheartening comment on the nature of our film consumption, The Promise far outdistances the other recent love story set against the Armenian genocide: The Ottoman Lieutenant, a subpar movie in every respect."