The Promise

Just had a friend show this to me on Vimeo and I absolutely love it. The dialogue is great and delivered with impeccable comic timing. I found myself laughing to the point I was nearing tears.

Both actors deliver great performances and deliver the subtle humor of the script incredibly well.

The only negative I'll mention are some rather lame special effects towards the end. That being said, they hardly take away from the film at all.

"The Promise" is a great example of how you can create an amazing short film without the need for a large budget and cast.

Well done to the team behind this.

This short starts with a good idea, where a friend draws a gun on another friend because five years ago he agreed to a promise that he would kill him if he was still going nowhere with his life – and that was precisely five years ago right now. This kicks off some chatty banter which is very much in the "I know, right" American style and it is pretty amusing because it is done in this friendly way but is also essentially about the prospect of one of them murdering the other. The energy and natural tone of this makes it really fun but for me the problem was that, even at a lean 7 minutes (including titles), it ran out of steam before the end.

The joke doesn't really go anywhere though, so once you have chuckled at the banter a few times, there is nothing new to come really. The conclusion throws in something just to give the film a way of ending (since it wasn't really moving in any way) but this doesn't really work and it also has a very simple but very poor looking visual effect. It is a shame because Neill and Yaffe both give good performances and it is a shame that Molleur didn't give them a better script and story to work within. It looks good and is nicely shot with the simple set and focused cast, but it doesn't really go anywhere and it is a shame how quickly the one joke gets stale.