The Man on the Bike: La Promesse (1996) ✭✭✭✭ 1/2

La Promesse, newly released on Blu-ray by Criterion, introduced the world to the filmmaking team of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, and their patented brand of realism on steroids. Produced during the booming economy of 1996, La Promesse, is a contemporary story of dissipated dreams and crumbling morals, told amid an unrelenting atmosphere of dank squalor. Against this unlikely backdrop, a