Review- The Pledge

I really wanted to like The Pledge.  I love Jack Nicholson.  I love Aaron Echart.  I love Sean Penn in the director's chair (see Into The Wild).  I did not love The Pledge.  The real annoyance of this movie is that it could have been so good.  We'll get to the "fixing" part later, but first let's look at the movie that actually exists.  There is nothing that sticks out in the performances, or even the directing that is particularly off-putting.  In fact, the conviction with which Nicholson plays his grizzled old detective is actually part of what is so vexxing.  Sean Penn does a beautiful job of creating a taut, tense thriller- textbook actually.  The real problem is that he doesn't do anything with the environment he creates.  The story just isn't there.  I did a little research on the film, and it is based on a book by Friedrich DurrenMatt.  This story must have worked on the page, but it certainly doesn't on the movie set.  

The story starts with a retirement.  After 30+ years of service to the Reno Police Department, Jerry Black (Jack Nicholson) is retiring to a life of fishing and leisure.  Of course this all changes when his retirement party is interrupted by news of the brutal murder of a 7-year-old girl that has taken place that night.  Jerry goes with his replacement, Stan Krolak (a mustachioed Aaron Eckhart) to investigate the crime scene.  It is determined that an eye witness has pin-pointed the man he saw fleeing the scene and he is waiting at the police station.  Our suspect is Toby Jay (Benicio Del Toro).  Toby is a mentally retarded man who Krolak sees as an easy confession.  Toby was found guilty in a very similar crime years earlier and, with just a bit of pressure applied, Krolak gets his confession.  Black doesn't buy it though.  He is able to (somehow) sense that Toby was talking about the previous crime.  Of course, none of this matters for Poor Old Toby, as he promptly seizes a cop's gun and blasts his teeth through the wall (literally).  We then see Black move to the area where several similar crimes have taken place and begin to investigate.  From this point forward we have the typical unraveling of clues about town, and we see Black fall in love with a little, blond girl remarkably similar to those murdered, and her mother (In a delightfully trashy turn by Robin Wright-Penn).  As his former colleagues begin to doubt his sanity, Black begins to feel the threat of violence nearing.  When the killer's presence surfaces close to home, can Jerry Black save his new found family?

Did that sound like a cheesy, trailer description?  Well that is probably because that is what watching it feels like.  The movie spends a great deal of time and effort making sure that we care about the characters- that we understand the importance of their plight.  But it takes all of that emotional investment and dumps it in our empty popcorn buckets.  There is no payoff.  No final sense of denouement.  There doesn't always need to be a satisfying ending in film.  But psychological thrillers need to have one.  You can't (effectively) pull a No Country For Old Men-style ending for thrillers.  Something needs to happen.  And the ending for The Pledge just sucks.  Watch it- you'll see what I mean.  I'm not going to say anything else because I don't like spoilers, but check out the Wikipedia site if you don't want to sit through it.  And it really may not be the ending that is so terrible.  It may be that the movie seems like it is going to be great.  The cinematography is beautiful.  The score is perfect.  Even the performances (including cameo roles by Helen Mirren and Harry Dean Stanton) are really, quite good.  It is all of this quality and potential that makes the payoff so disappointing.  

So here is what we have.  A movie with a top-notch cast.  A movie with some beautiful shots of the stunning American west.  A movie with a really compelling story.  And a bad movie.  What does that tell you?  Something went wrong in transit from the page to the screen, and even the capable hands of veterans like Penn and Nicholson weren't enough to separate The Pledge from the dime-a-dozen thrillers that come out every month.  Sorry Jerks, but stick to Unbreakable and The Usual Suspects.

Overall Rating- 4/10