Wordiezett So much average

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

TheLittleSongbird My main reason for seeing 'Promised Land', the first film in Amos Gitai's "Border Trilogy", was Rosamund Pike early on in her career. She was a promising young talent at the time and has really grown into a very good and better-than-given-credit-for actress who really delivers in the right role, as can be evidenced in one of the best Best Actress performances of the decade, and one of the best performances that year, in 'Gone Girl'.There was also intrigue as to how 'Promised Land' would deal with such a heavy, harrowing and nasty subject matter, human trafficking, something that is important to be raised awareness of and not addressed enough in visual media (film and television alike) while also being difficult to do it justice. As can be made clear from watching 'Promised Land'. Any film that takes on a subject such as human trafficking should be applauded for trying, but it is my feeling that 'Promised Land' could have dealt with it much more and handled it with more sincerity and taste. It is neither terrible or great, as a matter to me it's one of those difficult to rate and discuss films, and to be seen to see how human trafficking can be portrayed on screen and for completests of Rosamund Pike and Amos Gitai. That is if one can find it, with that it had a limited release at the time and, other than various websites having it in full, its availability is relatively obscure.'Promised Land', starting with its strengths, does start off promisingly. It has a very evocative opening scene and some of the first half has a gritty documentary-like feel. Some of it looks good, the first half is shot pretty well, the locations are striking and atmospheric and there is some impressively rich lensing in some of the night sequences.When it comes to the acting, which is actually not too bad at all considering what they were given, the standouts are Hanna Schygulla bringing a menacing but also comforting charisma to her role (more so than it deserved, with some really clunky dialogue that sounded made up on the spot) and Anne Parillaud, quite moving in hers. Rosamund Pike disappointingly doesn't have that much to do and the role is very limited in depth, but she nonetheless gives a conscientious and brave performance (again like Schygulla, more so than the material deserved). Some scenes are suitably harrowing.However, 'Promised Land's' promise doesn't last very long. The first half did have its faults, with some of the pacing being dull and taking too long a time to get to the point, but the film really loses its way in the second half. The subject as has been said is unspeakably harrowing, you don't have to have gone through it yourself to know that, so a nasty approach is appropriate and necessary, but it still could have been done with more tact than this. Here the horrors were both excessive and trivialised and the treatment of the women was portrayed in a way that was self-indulgent and gratuitously salacious, done to overkill effect.Coherence, or lack of it, is also an issue. There is not much going on plot-wise in terms of structure and some of it is aimless. The second half in particular is repetitive and figuring out what's going on beyond the endless stringing of torture (and such) scenes was near-impossible. Telling who was who was the same (the far too dark lighting does not help), with the film having characters that despite the actors' best efforts have no development to them whatsoever. The dialogue is continually clunky and says nothing illuminating about this subject other than what we already know, and Gitai's direction is heavy-handed. Emotional impact is non-existent, the film is just far too distasteful to evoke any kind of empathy and the characters are too flimsily developed to make one care for them properly. Then there's the all too convenient Deux Ex Machina conclusion, which was too much of a cop-out.Overall, started off with a lot of promise but loses its way drastically in particularly the second half. 5/10 Bethany Cox

DICK STEEL Promised Land is one part of the so-called Borders Trilogy that Amos Gitai has crafted, the other two being Free Zone and Disengagement. In this film, he tackles the issue of women trafficking across borders between Egypt and Israel, in which there seems to be no problems, obstacles or conflict between the peoples of both sides engaged in this illegal trade, which still persists, with various filmmakers around the world taking on the issue head on in their respective geographies, in films such as Lilya 4-ever and Your Name is Justine.This film can be broken down, I believe, into three parts, and on the whole it's like Gitai taking the audience on a journey to witness first hand the ordeal that the female victims are put through. The shaky cam technique helped in putting oneself there in the first person perspective, though it could be somewhat unsettling, as if the perspective and point of view seem to come from being one of the perpetrators of the trade, being able to partake in, yet only standing by like an eyewitness, but unable to reach out and help the girls.It's not a documentary, but the effect made it look like one, with conversations up close, and plenty of tight shots choosing to disorientate the viewer, just like how the victims are suffering, as they are moved constantly from place to place in hurried fashions, under the blanket of night, trekking across deserts to their final destination, which at the end of the film, you wonder just exactly where you have ended up in. One scene that'll definitely stir some upsetting emotions, is how the women get herded up and inspected like cattle, having their assets exposed and prodded, chided, stripped of their dignity and clothes, while listening to an auction going around them for the best price from the highest bidder. Before that the girls do look as if they're clueless about their impending ordeal, until it's too late.The second act dealt with an underground club of sorts, which brings the entire film to the one hour mark. Here the girls are prepared, again in quite undignified terms of being hosed down with water to clean themselves, akin to being a prisoner (well actually yes), and the first step toward their sexual slavery, including making up to beautify themselves for their clientèle later. As mentioned, again the audience is put in the spot, standing by to watch but unable to do anything about it. Perhaps yet again we're thrust into the spotlight, because I think the message is clear that should there be no demand, the supply would naturally dry up. I suppose this approach here is like getting people to swear off meat, to varying degrees of success, by having the person witness how meat is being slaughtered and prepared.Now the third act I believe was pure Gitai genius, though it may irk many to think, that's it? I had very much enjoyed the ending of Free Zone, and this could rival that as being equally powerful. Without giving anything away here, I felt that on one hand the plight of the women were raised, and there doesn't seem to be anything in sight that could rescue them. Then comes that major event that brings us up and about, presenting an opportunity to be grasped and exploited. It isn't impossible of course, given the environment Israel finds itself in from time to time. On the other hand, the Deus Ex Machina approach here may not go down well in being something like a cop out of a finale. But if you dwell on it deeper, it's the honest truth that there's simply no quick and easy solution to have it solved, especially not on film, hence the approach that unless some form of miracle happens, we're not going to see the problem disappear anytime soon.Promised Land is one long process from beginning to end that hopes to elicit some response from the audience in either raising their awareness of the problem outside of their comfort zones, or for those who are fueling the demand side of things, to perhaps stop and think if they're contributors to a totally inhuman and undignified process. Oh, and fans of Rosamund Pike who might be drawn to the film because of her presence, you're likely to be disappointed as she only as a very limited supporting role in the film.

dromasca I liked 'Promised Land' and I am wondering why it got so many bad reviews from critics and why it did not have a fair chance to meet with the public. Other people comments have too much focused on what they perceive as flaws in the logic of the story. These may actually be real, as Amos Gitai is not the best story teller on screen, but this is not where the essence of a film like this needs to be looked for. The subject of the film is human trafficking and none of the several documentary or pseudo-documentary films I have seen lately did a better job in raising the issue in a strong and emotional manner, shouting about the brutality and evil that is happening in the lives of the victims. It is exactly the lack of logic, the absence of any romanticism or fictional elements that brings the issue in a stronger manner towards the viewers. The series of brutal and realistic scenes becomes surrealistic because the reality is exceeding the ugliness of nightmare. The contrast between the ideal Holy Land and the ideal Israel that Amos Gitai may dream for his country and reality is the very contrast that almost all Israelis have to deal with. This film raises a painful issue in the painful manner that it deserves.

butchins1 This was an incredibly important subject...treated in an amateurish, arrogant way. The director expected the audience to understand what was going on...this was impossible: there was no plot, no script to "speak" of, no plot points, no character development, no story development. It was filmed in a shaky documentary style (which is valid if you have something to say). I was always taught that any narrative, be it a movie, book, play, even a piece of music, has to have a beginning, a middle and an end - this dreadful excuse for a movie had a beginning...and then it waffled for the next hour or so until the woman we sort of guessed was the heroine, ran off into the night. Let's be specific: The opening sequence wasn't that bad - very evocative scenes in the dessert, camels, Bedouin, a group of Eastern European women, a campfire, lots of Russian and Arabic chit chat - OK, "expectations build": Next scene (after the first obligatory rape scene): auction of the Eastern European women as prostitutes: very noisy, not sure who the English-speaking (French-accented) person was - a buyer or a seller: couldn't make that out. A van drives by with two people in the back (man/woman) staring out at the auction...who are they, why are they there? Nobody knows. Next scene: in a nightclub (after the "hosing down" of the prostitutes - a highly contrived scene, calculated to make us think of Holocaust victims in the showers - come on Amos, what are you really trying to say? The woman from the van (we eventually learn her name is Rose - Rosamund Pike) which was driving around the auction and her boyfriend (is he her boyfriend?) arrive at the nightclub, one of the prostitutes asks her for help. Rose is totally confused: "What, how, why - I can't help you...why me?" she says indicating that she doesn't even understand the cry for help. Next scene, Rose and her boyfriend (?) are in the passenger compartment of a van with ALL THE PROSTITUTES IN THE BACK! Hello...! What's going on here? She couldn't (or wouldn't) help the prostitute escape, why is she in the van with them? Contrived gratuitous sex scene with Rose and her boyfriend (?). Next scene, the van arrives in a grimy industrial area, unloads the prostitutes at what is apparently a brothel ("The Promised Land" of the title) - and lo and behold, Rose the mystery woman gets out with them and enters the brothel: where's her boyfriend? Dunno... Why is she there with them? Dunno...She and the "heroine" - the prostitute who begged her for help in the nightclub - sit huddled together listening to the driving rain (it wasn't raining when they entered the brothel), talking as if they were old friends. Flashback, to Estonia, the prostitute is a virginal choir girl, singing about the "Peace of Jerusalem" (in English mind you), pure driven snow outside (another "message") and suddenly Rose appears: OK now I'm totally lost. Then the audience is jerked back to the present with a terrorist attack on the brothel - why? There's nobody around, the only people there (apparently) are whores and their johns...upstairs - why a terrorist attack here? Everybody runs outside, the prostitute who asked for help and Rose escape in the confusion and run off into the night. Close. ..and this won a prize at the Venice Film Festival!!!!??? It wouldn't win a passing grade in a student film contest. It's clearly a case of the Emperor's New Clothes: this has to be the most self-indulgent so-called movie ever to grace the screen: even "Plan 9 from Outer Space" had some quirky charm... Sorry Amos - not even an "E" for effort.