Product Description

THE SUSPECT CONFESSED TO THE MURDER, THEN TOOK HIS OWN LIFE.CASE CLOSED? NOT FOR HOMICIDE COP JERRY BLACK. HE HAS HIS OWN INSTINCTS ABOUT THE CRIME. AND EVEN THOUGH HE'S READY TO BEGINA GONE-FISHIN' RETIREMENT, HE PROMISED THE VICTIM'S FAMILY HE'D FIND THE KILLER.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25005 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2001-06-19
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 124 minutes

Amazon.com
Jack Nicholson is detective Jerry Black, a respected and well-liked veteran of the Reno police force retiring to a life of angling with more than a little apprehension. Thus he jumps into a murder case, the slaying of a little girl, a mere six hours from retirement and makes a promise to the grieving mother to catch the killer. As his partner (an effectively abrasive Aaron Eckhart) squeezes a confession out of the severely mentally handicapped suspect (a thoroughly unsettling performance by Benicio Del Toro), Jerry is convinced that they've got the wrong man.

As in Sean Penn's previous work, this is an actors' piece. Nicholson plays Jerry with restlessness under his easy-going, smiling calm; his patient fisherman's heart leaps at every nibble while he casts for a murder suspect. And Del Toro, Helen Mirren, Vanessa Redgrave, and Mickey Rourke make striking impressions in their single-scene appearances. Penn is less concerned with the mystery than the emotional turmoil and Jerry's state of mind, interrupting moments of calm with jagged cuts and discomforting images (including some especially disturbing crime scene photos). Jerry's instincts and methods are sound and his sensitivity is real--he takes in a battered single mom (Robin Wright Penn) and her little girl, and develops a rewarding family life--but his passion for justice turns to unhealthy, destructive obsession. That's ultimately what we're left with at the conclusion of this often off-putting but ultimately fascinating film. The truth will not always set you free. --Sean Axmaker

From The New Yorker
Glum, affecting realism from Sean Penn, directing his third film. In the Reno area, a retired police detective, Jerry Black (Jack Nicholson), becomes convinced that a rapist-murderer who strikes at little girls is about to strike again. Jerry is a good man, but he's so obsessed with the case that he loses his judgment. He takes in a battered waitress (Robin Wright Penn) and her little daughter, and with horror we realize that his feelings for the girl won't stop him from using her as a lure. The movie, based on a novel by the late Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt, offers a bleak view of isolated people living close to madness. The despair comes heavily and unrelentingly-the colors are mainly gray, the climate wintry-but it feels authentic, and, as a sustained mood, it pulls us into the story. With Sam Shepard and Aaron Eckhart as cops, and Vanessa Redgrave, Helen Mirren, and Mickey Rourke as townspeople. A worthy movie, but don't go expecting an easy time of it. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

not for dolts
Anyone expecting to find a formulaic cops-chase-killers movie should immediately move on to the latest Hollywood idiot fodder flick. "The Pledge" is intelligent, thought-provoking, well-directed, well-acted, and a feast for the senses.
I know many people who felt let down by this film, possibly because they expected the usual chase and hero's triumph at the end, which does not happen here. I found myself to be curious and somehow astonished by the end, and anxious to see it again.
Jack Nicholson gives one of his best latter-day performances here, and touches on areas which are not normally "Jack". By the end of the film, he is stunned and totally confused; knowing he was somehow right, though strange twists of fate conspire against him. It's almost Hitchcock territory; the man wrongly accused, or the man who knows all the facts, and yet no one believes him.
Sean Penn is no clown director; he's not making mass-market cheap thrill flicks here. He lets the story develop with a total absence of Hollywood cliches and setups. By the end, though most people will feel somehow cheated out of a visceral release, I feel viewers with an open mind who don't expect their movies to be served up like fast-food will be quite pleased. It's one of those movies you can talk about all night long.

Powerful and Thoughtful.......
First, let me say that I consider Jack Nicholson to be one of most underrated actors of his generation. His performance in "The Pledge" is nothing short of remarkable, not so much in the way his speaks the dialogue, but in those moments when he has none, and reveals the mind of a deeply tormented man. Other reviews have discussed the plot, so I'll dispense with that, other than to say that this is a movie about redemption and a lost cause. The pledge referred to in the title is one that Nicholson cannot assuredly keep, and thus forfeits his "soul's salvation". The Nicholson character is basically a lonely, desperate man, who hangs his hopes on catching a serial killer, and by a twist of fate, fails in his mission. The supporting cast is excellent, Benecio Del Toro, Robin Wright Penn and even Vanessa Redgrave (one of the best performances in the film, although a brief one-scene cameo). Sean Penn's direction is superb, with the intercutting of nature scenes with the main plot (watch for the symbolic flock of birds throughout the film). This is not a film for those who desire neat, tied-up endings but ones which mirror the real and unresolved tragedies of life. Truly a haunting and poignant story, with excellent character studies all around.

Stunning Thriller With Nicholson At His Best!
There is much to recommend in this complex and deeply layered psychological thriller featuring Jack Nicholson in what seems to have evolved into a continuing exploration into the dark side of human nature in his roles over the last decade. This is a gorgeously photographed and quite penetrating drama which on one level involves Nicholson as a dogged, troubled, and obsessed retired detective convinced the actual killer of his last gruesome juvenile homocide case is still at large, while on another level it is a stunning and all-too graphic portrait of what such single-minded concentration can do to a fragile and vulnerable personality. While it is not a movie I would recommend to the faint of heart, it is an absorbing exploration into this character's heart of darkness and the perils associated with such risky adventures.

The movie is set supposedly in Reno and the surrounding Sierras, and the natural scenery that provides the stage for this drama is simply breath taking, and is worth the viewing experience for this experience alone. I was, however, disappointed to discover by viewing the end credits that the movie was largely shot in western Canada. Wherever it was filmed, the scenery provides a curious backdrop to the ugliness and sordidness of human beings, and how their own experiences and personalities blind them to the beauty in others around them. Each has been branded by the character and limitations of his or her own reservoir of emotional experiences, and each is consequently sent spinning toward a seemingly irrevocable tendency to make snap conclusions about complex realities as a result.

Thus Nicholson is caught in the dilemma of not only his own troubles, but in the easy answers others have in attributin ghis actions and behavior to other motives and problems. Thus Robin Wright Penn, Mickey Rourke, Sam Shepard, Vanessa Redgrave, Harry Dean Stanton and a number of notable others blithely (and sometimes painfully) slip past the rather remarkable qualities in Nicholson's character as well as in Wright Penn's memorable turn as a woman with battered background and a beautiful little girl who lights up the screen and who also just happens to exactly fit Nicholson's bogeyman serial killer's profile.

Thus, his motives for the subsequent involvement are confused at best, yet he seems to genuinely care for the new family he adopts along the way. With this, the stage is set for potential tragedy, and while I found the conclusion emotionally and dramatically unpleasing, it was admittedly indeed in the scope of the characters and circumstance to have it so ended. I recommend this, but also caution against letting one's impressionable children watch this. Like "Silence Of The Lambs" or "Seven", this is hardly juvenile entertainment. Enjoy!