The Pledge (2000)
Country: US
Technical: col/scope 123m
Director: Sean Penn
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Benicio del Toro, Aaron Eckhart, Robin Wright Penn, Helen Mirren, Tom Noonan, Vanessa Redgrave, Mickey Rourke, Sam Shepard, Harry Dean Stanton
Synopsis:
A Montana police officer with a penchant for fishing calls off his retirement holiday to investigate further into the sex murder of a young girl to whose parents he has promised justice. It is the start of an obsession which leads him to his quarry but also proves his undoing.
Review:
Extraordinarily downbeat treatment of a common enough theme (the hunt for a serial killer), which sets up its antihero in the most mutually destructive resolution yet seen in films of this type. What's more, because the killer's identity is never finally established, we are made accomplices in Nicholson's 'transference of guilt'. In promising to find the man responsible, in a sense he takes on the killer's guilt, targeting potential victims himself and using them as bait: the film can be seen as an exaggeration of any policeman's corruption by the evil he encounters. All of which makes it a deeply discomfiting experience for the viewer, but an inexplicably star-studded one in a distracting way.
Country: US
Technical: col/scope 123m
Director: Sean Penn
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Benicio del Toro, Aaron Eckhart, Robin Wright Penn, Helen Mirren, Tom Noonan, Vanessa Redgrave, Mickey Rourke, Sam Shepard, Harry Dean Stanton
Synopsis:
A Montana police officer with a penchant for fishing calls off his retirement holiday to investigate further into the sex murder of a young girl to whose parents he has promised justice. It is the start of an obsession which leads him to his quarry but also proves his undoing.
Review:
Extraordinarily downbeat treatment of a common enough theme (the hunt for a serial killer), which sets up its antihero in the most mutually destructive resolution yet seen in films of this type. What's more, because the killer's identity is never finally established, we are made accomplices in Nicholson's 'transference of guilt'. In promising to find the man responsible, in a sense he takes on the killer's guilt, targeting potential victims himself and using them as bait: the film can be seen as an exaggeration of any policeman's corruption by the evil he encounters. All of which makes it a deeply discomfiting experience for the viewer, but an inexplicably star-studded one in a distracting way.
Country: US
Technical: col/scope 123m
Director: Sean Penn
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Benicio del Toro, Aaron Eckhart, Robin Wright Penn, Helen Mirren, Tom Noonan, Vanessa Redgrave, Mickey Rourke, Sam Shepard, Harry Dean Stanton
Synopsis:
A Montana police officer with a penchant for fishing calls off his retirement holiday to investigate further into the sex murder of a young girl to whose parents he has promised justice. It is the start of an obsession which leads him to his quarry but also proves his undoing.
Review:
Extraordinarily downbeat treatment of a common enough theme (the hunt for a serial killer), which sets up its antihero in the most mutually destructive resolution yet seen in films of this type. What's more, because the killer's identity is never finally established, we are made accomplices in Nicholson's 'transference of guilt'. In promising to find the man responsible, in a sense he takes on the killer's guilt, targeting potential victims himself and using them as bait: the film can be seen as an exaggeration of any policeman's corruption by the evil he encounters. All of which makes it a deeply discomfiting experience for the viewer, but an inexplicably star-studded one in a distracting way.