In one scene, a goddess appears sporting a halo-like ring around her upright hairdo and a robe complete with tentacles that wriggle as if she were underwater. A slave runs at the speed of light and walks on water.

Among the amazing sets, a red palace resembles Beijing's Forbidden City - except it is designed as a circular maze. Another scene takes place in a half-sphere-shaped cage in a building with red backlit oval windows. Two characters face off in a room with screens sliding along circular tracks.

Chen's epic is largely the artistic vision of Tim Yip, who won an Oscar for art direction for his work on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and the special effects wizardry of Centro Digital Pictures, whose credits include Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill series and Stephen Chow's Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle.

And the breathtaking visuals came at a steep price: the movie cost $35 million US to make.

The Promise marks a strong comeback for Chen, one of China's most respected directors - after the heartwarming but low-key Together and the disappointing English-language erotic thriller Killing Me Softly.

It's already garnered a Golden Globe nomination for best foreign film and will represent China in the same category at the Oscars. The movie set a new opening weekend box office record in China last weekend, grossing 74.52 million yuan ($9.2 million), the official Xinhua news agency reported.

But the sheer artistic brilliance of The Promise is tempered by a long-winded plot.

Cecilia Cheung plays an ordinary girl transformed by a goddess into a princess on one condition - that she will never find true love.

Nicholas Tse portrays a duke who threatens to take the princess by force. A general's slave (Jang Dong-gun) comes to the rescue, and the princess falls in love with her saviour whom she wrongly believes to be the general (Hiroyuki Sanada).

The truth is uncovered and the princess' destiny is lived out as the general, the slave and the duke engage in a battle, eventually killing each other.

Some plot twists don't quite work. When the duke accused the princess of deceiving him as a youth, saying "You destroyed my chance to be a good person," the line was met with incredulous chuckles at one Hong Kong theatre.

The acting has bright spots, but isn't outstanding overall. Sanada - who also appeared in the Tom Cruise movie The Last Samurai - brings out the haughty quality of the general, despite having to deliver lines in Mandarin. South Korean Jang's intense gaze highlights the downtrodden status of the slave he portrays, while Chinese actor Liu Ye gives depth to another slave character.

The multinational cast reflects an increasingly popular strategy to fashion movie productions with a pan-Asian appeal.

Chen's choice of The Promise is also consistent with a recent trend of Chinese directors to shift from depictions of traditional Chinese culture and life under communism to action epics.