If leaving a movie theatre with your stomach in knots is your idea of a good time, you can't beat the hideous tension that builds up in the mystery/thriller The Pledge.
In fact, the creation of atmosphere is so well done in this movie you could almost overlook a fairly empty narrative and a whopper of a cop-out ending. Almost.
Finding the person responsible for the gruesome murder of a little girl becomes an obsession for detective Jerry Black (Jack Nicholson). Meant to be retired, Jerry nonetheless gets himself involved in the case and later, in the arrest of a man (Benicio Del Toro) Jerry does not believe did the deed. Having sworn to the dead child's mother that he will find the killer, Nicholson cannot rest until he pursues the case further and follows his instincts.
Sure enough, he turns up two similar cases in neighbouring towns, unsolved murders from years past.
Combining retirement with his methodical search for a serial killer, Jerry buys a gas station in a rural spot he reckons the killer will have to visit sooner or later.
The plot thickens. He gets involved with a local woman (Robin Wright Penn). He comes to love her little daughter as his own, but the child fits the victim profile of the killer Jerry is endlessly searching for.
Meanwhile, his fellow cops believe Jerry is losing it, big time. He drinks. He says things that don't make a lot of sense to other people. All he has to go on to prove his theory of a serial killer is a child's drawing and his own stubborn nature.
There are several things going on at once in The Pledge. While the audience never doubts this detective's beliefs and his work, The Pledge builds itself into a literally sickening manhunt that seems never to come to an end. There are incidents. Possible sightings. Potential suspects. Red herrings galore. When the situation is finally resolved, it is clever in itself but leads to a massive intellectual cheat of an ending, considering all that has gone before. And it tends to wipe out all the good stuff that preceded it.
And make no mistake -- there is plenty of good stuff. Nicholson is in top form here. Helen Mirren, Vanessa Redgrave, Mickey Rourke, Sam Shepard, Aaron Eckhart and Harry Dean Stanton are in the cast. The story is told in a slow and thoughtful fashion. For a scary movie, The Pledge is pretty to look at -- there are landscape and mountain shots (this is Nevada) and leisurely scenes of Jerry out fishing in boats, pastoral stuff that, of course, throws the horror of the killings into greater relief.
All this hard work gets obliterated by the third act.
Don't you just hate when that happens?
(This film is rated AA)
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