La Promesse (1996)

Few dramas strike me with more power than those that tell a simple story with strong, believable characters making fateful choices that have consequences they cannot foresee. Belgium's writer-director Dardenne brothers excel at this sort of "small" drama, and The Promise is riveting precisely because it keeps to its scope so brilliantly.

Igor is a young fellow who knows his way around a hustle, something he's learned from his father, Roger (Olivier Gourmet, in another outstanding performance), who makes a living hustling illegal immigrants into Brussels -- and then hustling them, period. Igor and Roger have their bouts, but there is a bond of love between them, all the same.

That all changes one day when an immigration enforcement raid forces everyone to scramble in order to hide. An African immigrant, Amidou, slips from a scaffolding and falls to the street below, barely hanging onto life. Igor finds him and makes him a promise: that he'll take care of Amidou's young wife, Assita, and their infant son. He has no idea what that will cost him, but his desire to fulfill that promise will exact a considerable toll.

The Dardenelles resist every temptation to turn Roger into a hulking bad guy or Igor into the poor innocent corrupted by his father's ways. The same is true of their depictions of the illegal immigrants, who are far from the innocents that a typical American film would render them as. These are all terribly flawed people, but that's what makes them so believable, and the drama so affecting.

Heavily praised upon its 1996 release, The Promise is one film that fulfills its own considerable promise, even after repeat viewings.