"The Pledge" is one-character portrayal of a retiring detective who can't get his last case out of his mind. That it involves the brutal rape and murder of a young blond girl by a supposed serial killer would be interesting in itself but director Sean Penn is after more. Casting Jack Nicholson(as Jerry Black) allows Penn to give us a smart compilation of character flaws of Nicholson's previous films. Jerry Black comes across as a troubled man who enjoys trout fishing and his police work but precious little else. Indeed, Nicholson initially appears to be holding back a mysterious if not evil nature likened to his 'here's Johnny' role in "The Shining". In a revealing encounter with a psychiatrist (wonderfully acted by Helen Mirren) ostensibly to try to decipher a criminal profile from a child's drawing, Jerry Black instead has the tables turned when he exhibits traits of someone with post-traumatic stress. Penn then shows another Nicholson role, that of the authoritative figure who is really warm at heart, as in "The Border" and "The Last Detail". His bedtime reading of 'Thumbelina' to the little girl and his reticent advances toward her mother (in a dreary role by Robin Wright Penn) are uncharacteristic. But that is not the final take because Penn isn't interested in the run-of-the-mill hero. Instead, the final Nicholson we see is a tragic, singular minded figure of "A Few Good Men" and "Five Easy Pieces". Penn deliberately plays on our sympathies for Nicholson through use of periodic slow motion to detail the escalating torment of a man who cannot prove his suspicions. As well, we can feel for this ex-cop who never lets down his guard in protecting a little girl and her mother from a killer he has deliberately flushed out of hiding. Penn also has a gift for illustrating local figures from the sheriff pumping iron while his female officer is manicuring her toes, to the shop clerk trying to give directions, to the Harry Dean Stanton character who refuses to sell his store one minute and is out the next, to even Nicholson's love interest who can't afford to have her chipped front tooth fixed. Two scenes crystallize this all-consuming, Quixotic figure in "The Pledge". Even as his fellow officers tell him to 'get a life', Jerry rebukes them by saying he has made a promise, something that isn't kept much in this day and age. Secondly we see the macabre yet powerful glimpse of his kitchen where he has his fresh filleted trout next to the colored photograph of the bloodied corpse. In "The Pledge", Penn has neatly given us a summation of Jack Nicholson's many human qualities in a poignant film about how we can by misdirected by our best intentions
Review of The Pledge
