Synopsis
A police chief about to retire pledges to help a woman find her daughter's killer.
A police chief about to retire pledges to help a woman find her daughter's killer.
Jack Nicholson Patricia Clarkson Beau Daniels Benicio del Toro Dale Dickey Wendy Donaldson Adrien Dorval Aaron Eckhart Shawn Henter Kathy Jensen Taryn Knowles Nels Lennarson Costas Mandylor Gordon May J.J. McColl Gardiner Millar Helen Mirren Adam Nelson Tom Noonan Michael O'Keefe Tony Parsons Robert Popoff Nicole Robert Pauline Roberts Eileen Ryan Robin Wright Vanessa Redgrave Mickey Rourke Sam Shepard Show All…
Morgan Creek Productions Franchise Pictures Clyde Is Hungry Films Pledge Productions Epsilon Motion Pictures
La promesse, 誓言, 白色死约, 誓不罢休, The Pledge – Das Versprechen
Sean Penn's The Pledge is a forgotten, fairly interesting & bleak character study disguised as a serial killer thriller. About obsession, regret and fear of retirement, featuring a great late period Jack Nicholson performance. Tho it's quite dated & heavy handed in some ways but still worth watching. Also Mickey Rourke cameo was brilliant, packs more into that short heartbreaking scene than most other actors can manage in an entire film.
Cinematic Time Capsule
2001 Marathon - Film #8
“I made a promise … I intend to keep it”
Have you ever made a promise you couldn’t keep no matter how hard you tried?
It’s the evening of his police force retirement when Jack Nicholson looks into the eyes of a grieving mother and swears he’ll track down her daughter’s murderer. Within days everybody believes the murderer has been caught, except Jack, who can’t let it go, and the case becomes his manic obsession.
Sean Penn’s morose meditation on obsession is packed with visuals that’ll stick in your brain. It’s been 20 years since I’ve seen it, and yet, when I watched it tonight I was shocked by how many of…
78/100
The Pledge is an underrated gem that explores the nature of both promises and obsession, all wrapped up in the trappings of a stylish and high-quality thriller. Sean Penn's direction is out of this world, Chris Menge's cinematography is vibrant and lush, the music by Klaus Badelt and Hans Zimmer is simply haunting, and It's all topped off by a powerhouse of a performance by Jack Nicholson.
Let's face it, the story could be considered derivative, but it doesn't really matter when the technical elements are so fascinating and the themes that are interwoven are so dominant. By the end of the film, you'll be so invested in the story that it'll take awhile to realize the dark and devastating path that the film has taken you on. Truly, The Pledge is as engrossing as thrillers get.
All in all, a simply excellent film, and it's highly recommended for anyone who enjoys a quality slow-burn thriller.
Sean Penn directs "The Pledge",
With Nicholson right on the edge.
A man on a mission,
So he'll keep fishing,
Getting evidence for what is alleged.
Grade: GREAT (4 out of 5)
I find that describing The Pledge is easiest when saying what the film is not. The film is not noir, not a crime film, nor is it a thriller (although it touches upon all this genres); instead, The Pledge is a detective film.
By that I mean that the film’s core focus is about how the central crime affects Jack Nicholson‘s character, the obsession the crime creates and the extreme lengths the character is willing to go for a solution. The crime is not the focus, the detective is the focus.
The crime itself is pedestrian, nothing too thrilling. So if you watch The Pledge with your focus on the plot and the crime, then…
Jack Nicholson is really one of our greats.
He delivers one of his all-time best performances as Jerry Black, a retired cop who thinks his last case on the job closed too easily. The story, refreshingly, is not about the ongoing murder mystery of the little girl in the red dress. This is a film about Jerry Black, a man who simply cannot let go.
Sean Penn surehandedly directs this meandering, almost lyrical, drama that is peppered by a cast of greats, old and new. The standout is Aaron Eckhart, who provides an original spin to the cliched character of a cocky, arrogant, younger partner.
"The Pledge" also featured a finale that kept me guessing, though I should have known that what was bound to happen would be completely inevitable.
Why I watched this movie? Mr. Jack Nicholson...this was one of the few Nicholson movies that I had not seen before.
What is this one about? A retiring police chief (Jack) pledges to catch the killer of a young child
My thoughts on this one? This has solid performances scattered throughout the movie. Nicholson appears in almost every scene in the movie and gives a memorable performance. The director, Sean Penn, gives Nicholson some major talent to act with in this movie. Benicio Del Toro, Robin Wright, Helen Mirren, Aaron Eckhart, Sam Shepard, Patricia Clarkson and Vanessa Redgrave all show up in this movie....the power of working with Jack? I do have some issues with the movie.....the pace is slow,…
On a re-watch some ten or so years later, Sean Penn's film has lost a considerable amount of its effect. What at first appeared to be a powerful character study now reveals itself to be a heavy-handed, poorly written drama that falls dangerously close to the type of generic TV fillers you could nod off to, wake up near the end and still recall everything you've missed.
It is quite a feat to make Jack Nicholson look poor in any film yet that is exactly what Penn achieves. A lack of ingenuity in the story department would be fine if this was even a half decent character study, which it is not. He is one of the few actors whose…
Dark and mysterious, interesting and entertaining, Jack Nicholson with a great supporting cast, an amazing ending, I can't ask for more.
قبل ست ساعات من انتهاء حفلة تقاعده تقع حادثة قتل، فيأبى إلا أن يكون المسؤول عنها بل أقسم وقطع عهدًا أن يُمسك بالجاني، يُلاحق أطراف الخيوط، الدلائل الوهميّة، أي شيء، يُشكّك في القاصي والداني، لن يهدأ له بال إلّا عندما يُحكم قبضته عليه، قضيّة لا دليل فيها إلا كلمات طفلة، أضربٌ من الخيال أم حقيقة تقشع الظلام.
قد يكون يومك مثاليًا وتشعر بأن الأرض لا تسعك من شدّة فرحك، ثم وبدون سابق إنذار تقع أمامك حادثة بشعة وأنت الشاهد الوحيد عليها، الحياة مُتقلّبة، لذلك علينا الاستمتاع في لحظاتها الصغيرة والكبيرة ولا ننتظر ونؤجل.
بداية سلِسة وجميلة، بناؤهم للقصة كان لبِنة تلو الأخرى، لا استعجال ولا قفز في الأحداث، بناء جيّد، كان هنالك سيناريو معيّن في بالي ولو حدث لأُعجبت فيه…
Opened 20 years ago this weekend. The second collaboration between star Jack Nicholson and director Sean Penn, THE PLEDGE at least got a wide release, unlike 1995's THE CROSSING GUARD, but it still proved to be a box office flop. That's a shame, because it's got a great (and restrained) Nicholson performance where he completely disappears into his character. Based on a Friedrich Durrenmatt novel that was filmed numerous times before in Europe (including 1996's THE COLD LIGHT OF DAY, with Richard E. Grant), THE PLEDGE has Nicholson as a Reno detective on his last day before retirement when a nine-year-old girl is found brutally murdered. Cocky colleague Aaron Eckhart gets the case and coerces a quick confession out of…
It had been years since I last saw this one, and it still stands as my favorite Sean Penn-directed film and one of the more overlooked films of the entire decade of the 2000's.
Nicholson gives his strongest late career performance here as Jerry, a homicide detective whose retirement comes simultaneous with the emergence of a haunting child murderer case, and it cannot leave his conscience. No matter how much he tries to ignore the lingering images and effect that this particular case has on him, with attempted trips out of town and out of country to catch up on his beloved hobby of fishing, he cannot escape it.
Stunning direction from Penn is complemented by a variety of terrific actors in the ensemble cast to make this a taut thriller. Everything culminates in one of the more daring and unexpected endings from a film of this kind that I have ever seen.
A nearly perfect film.
I think this film is more of a character study than a straight up mystery film. Its pretty good though.
I’ve seen this before, but not for many years. It’s slower and more depressing than I remember, but it is an interesting film with great performances.
Not your traditional uh mystery but definitely a thriller. It feels unresolved in some ways but it comes full circle.
Great idea that sometimes works really well with some genuinely intense moments of nail biting fear. Wild and original concept. Painfully stretched out and boring between amazing scenes.
This is a slow burn, a character drama disguised as a crime thriller.
Penn is a competent director and was wise enough to just let Nicholson do his thing and to stick to the books's original ending. Because that one is a doozy.
Opened 20 years ago this weekend. The second collaboration between star Jack Nicholson and director Sean Penn, THE PLEDGE at least got a wide release, unlike 1995's THE CROSSING GUARD, but it still proved to be a box office flop. That's a shame, because it's got a great (and restrained) Nicholson performance where he completely disappears into his character. Based on a Friedrich Durrenmatt novel that was filmed numerous times before in Europe (including 1996's THE COLD LIGHT OF DAY, with Richard E. Grant), THE PLEDGE has Nicholson as a Reno detective on his last day before retirement when a nine-year-old girl is found brutally murdered. Cocky colleague Aaron Eckhart gets the case and coerces a quick confession out of…
Man, this film fucking slaps!!!! I loved this alot. The cast is insane and the cinematography is fantastic. A few images grilled into my brain for sure. Definitely a must see.
Perhaps trying too hard, but generally a solid police / serial killer thriller.
Jack Nicholson is decent as the retiring cop with the pledge to the grieving mother.
From then on there is a procession of well known faces coming in and out of the story as he quests for the truth and to overcome his former colleagues desire to bury it with an easy confession. It does drag for large chunks as it goes on, with contrived set ups and attempts at poignancy.
Quite liked the conclusion though, but could have done with a bit of an edit to tighten it up for me.
A little too slow and meditative. Feel it also flirts a little too much like it’s an adaptation of a novel rather than a film, showing us sometimes what the character is thinking in jarringly edited asides than in actions and reactions.
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