The Pledge

Rating: Fair

Distributor: Warner Brothers
MPAA Classification: R
Genre: Mystery, Gloomy Drama
Running Length: 2 hours, 4 minutes
Release Date: January 19th, 2001 (wide)
Director: Sean Penn
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Robin Wright Penn, Aaron Eckhart, Vanessa Redgrave, Hellen Mirren, and Benicio Del Toro.

picture above from
www.ew.com/ew/article/review/movie/0,6115,95631.html

Plot: Jerry Black (Jack Nicholson) is a newly retired police officer who was involved with one last case, about a killer and sexual offender of a young girl. The killer (Benicio Del Toro), was caught and killed himself. However, Jerry is not satisfied. He works on the case past his retirement, making everyone in his old police station very worried about him. He finally thinks he has his man, and begins to use another young girl to try to set up his suspect. Though he begins to care for the girl and her mother (Robin Wright Penn), but how much does that matter to him?

       Plot: The pledge is a dissonant, foul, gloomy film that has some very good acting. Jack Nicholson is as usual fabulous in the starring role, as is his supporting cast that includes a transformed Robin Wright Penn, and a short stint by Benicio Del Toro. Sean Penn's direction is a bit pretentious, and overly flashy, but he showed some promise. It was not nearly as pretentious as the ugly script. I hope everyone involved are real proud of themselves for making such a damn depressing, unredeeming trash heap of a film.
      The cinematography was fine, nothing earth shattering, but the music did not do much for me. The mood Penn crafts is effective, if inconsistent, and at times even tacky. The ending is totally ridiculous, and serves no purpose. The whole film seems to serve no purpose, and there is no worthy message to accompany such an ugly film. It is often grotesque, and gross to add on to its depressing nature. It really is too bad because all the cast memebers were simply astonishing as they all shined indepedently in their roles. They include a few small ones, like Vanessa Redgrave's effective bit. The Pledge hopes to analyze a character, but it only meanders on being unhappy and pointless.
      In conclusion, I do not recommend seeing Penn's ridiculously foul smelling film, that leaves a terrible taste in your mouth. It accomplishes nothing, and is pretentious and egotistical. The acting is all top notch, especially by Jack Nicholson who may be one of the greatest American actors to ever live. Nonetheless, The Pledge is just tedious, don't see it.

                                          review by supernothingman