Posted: 02/07/2001

The Pledge

(2001)

by Hank Yuloff

Sean Penn directs all-star cast in dark psychodrama.

At what level do you want to hear about The Pledge? The basic story? Or the intellectual struggle of an ex-cop falling into the psyche of the job? Normally it is possible to separate the two but, in this movie, that is simply not possible. Director Sean Penn (Colors) has once again teamed with Jack Nicholson (the first time was in The Crossing Guard) to portray a police detective who stayed 6 hours too long at the faire.

Nicholson plays Jerry Black, who on the day of his retirement party goes on one last homicide call. It is a particularly grizzly murder of an 8-year-old girl. You can feel the winter storm that is passing through the Nevada mountains while they investigate the crime scene. Black, by some weird default, becomes the person who must notify the parents.

In what is to be the last of what has probably been many, many times he has had to perform this function, Black is forced to promise his immortal soul that they will find the killer of a little girl named Lori.

The cops think they have found the killer within a few hours, based on a little boy eye-witnessing a man running away from the scene, but something doesn’t sit well with Black.

As he takes the case on his own time, Black becomes obsessed with finding the real killer who he feels is still out there. Maybe protecting his soul has suddenly become more important because there isn’t a “next case” to redeem himself if he doesn’t find the guilty party this time.

Black goes so far as to use the young daughter of a woman he becomes involved with to lure the killer out of hiding. Robin Penn Wright is wonderful as the mom and Brittany Tiplady does great as Becky Fiske, “the bait.”

I leave it to you to decide as to whether Black is slowly losing his mind as the reason he makes some, seemingly, weird mistakes in his pursuit of the case. Or, is it the fact that this is writer Friedrich Durrenmatt’s first English-titled writing attempt and the translation was just a bit off.

The first killer suspect that the cops pick up is Benicio Del Toro. In a brief time on the scene, Del Toro shows that, between The Pledge and last year’s Traffic, he has not only come of age as an actor but it is time for everyone to know it.

Penn calls upon a couple of great actors for small but intricate parts of the story: Mickey Rourke as the father of another little girl who went missing, but assumed dead and Harry Dean Stanton as the owner of a gas station that Nicholson buys to stay in the area and hunt for the killer.

The one truly disappointing note in this movie is that the opening was a quick flash-forward to the ending, which was completely unnecessary. It adds a very average note to a slightly better than average thriller.

Hank Yuloff is an entertainment-industry entrepreneur living in Hollywood.

Got a problem? E-mail us at filmmonthly@gmail.com