Movie Review: The Pledge (2001)

A thoughtful psychological crime drama, The Pledge plays with a patient mood while grappling with a brutal murder and the search for the mysterious predator.

In Reno, Nevada, police detective Jerry Black (Jack Nicholson) is retiring. On his last working day, the brutalized body of a young blonde girl named Ginny is discovered in a snowy field. Jerry pledges to the victims' mother (Patricia Clarkson) that no matter what, he will bring the murderer to justice. Toby (Benicio del Toro), a dimwitted vagabond aboriginal, is arrested and detective Stan Krolak (Aaron Eckhart) extracts a confession from him, declaring the case closed.

Jerry doubts that Toby is the killer, and after retirement he continues his informal investigation, interviewing Ginny's grandmother Annalise (Vanessa Redgrave); the victim's best friend at school; and the father (Mickey Rourke) of another young blonde girl who met the same fate as Ginny. He gains a vague picture of the killer's car model and colour, and a murky connection between the crimes and porcupines.

Jerry purchases a gas station along the main highway in the rural area where he believes the next murder may happen. As the months pass, he befriends single mom Lori (Robin Wright Penn), who has a young blonde daughter Chrissy (Pauline Roberts) about the same age as the previous victims. Gradually, Jerry starts to encounter men who could be suspects. But Jerry is also hearing voices in his head, and may be starting to lose his grip on reality.

Directed by Sean Penn, The Pledge is an adaptation of the Friedrich Dürrenmatt book. This is a film that takes a deep breath from the surrounding landscape, and focusses on characters, atmosphere and emotion. There is little action that takes place on screen, but plenty that goes on in the thoughts, fears, and hopes of Jerry Black as he tries to fulfill the promise he made to the distraught mother of a young victim.

Penn's pacing is deliberate, but nevertheless engrossing. Within the forgotten back road setting where time is slow, towns are small, cars are old and technology is outdated, the film is packed with tiny unsettling moments, indications that all is not well, neither in the rural community stalked by a vicious child killer, nor in Jerry's mind. Jerry could be suffering from old-age, post-retirement emotional turmoil, the stress of his pledge, or something else altogether more serious. Penn provides hints, but never any clear resolutions. What is for sure is that some danger is lurking and closing in, and Jerry is welcoming, almost eager to face his nemesis. Whether or not he is ready is another question.

While The Pledge unfolds on its own terms towards a rich and rumpled conclusion, it does suffer from almost too much silence, as the details of Jerry's deliberate actions are sacrificed in search of style and a brooding aesthetic.

Jack Nicholson provides a thankfully subdued performance, staying well within himself despite the mounting stress. Jerry Black is a stoic, calculating character, well past the days of running after suspects and now more interested in laying an elaborate trap and waiting for the right time to pounce. Nicholson conveys a man under self-imposed pressure, with his judgement increasingly clouded. He may or may not be using Lori and Chrissy as a lure; he likely does not quite know anymore whether his need for a family is in conflict with the burning desire to solve a crime.

In support, almost every one-scene role is brought to life by a prominent actor. In addition to Clarkson, del Toro, Eckhart, Wright Penn, Rourke and Redgrave, Helen Mirren makes an appearance as a psychiatrist, Harry Dean Stanton is the original owner of the gas station purchased by Jerry, and Sam Shepard is a police detective.

The Pledge weaves a spell and luxuriates in its foggy density, as much a crime mystery as a thought-provoking sojourn to the place where promises become obsessions.

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Movie Review: State of Play (2009)

State of Play cannot quite decide what it wants to be: a glorification of the newspaper industry; a reality-based political murder-and-scandal thriller; or an investigative whodunnit. It ends up being an interesting enough hybrid meal that samples several cuisines without effectively proving to be totally competent in any. Not a surprise, since there are five names on the writing credits of the movie, a perfect recipe for a somewhat bland concoction.

Russell Crowe is Cal McAffrey, an old-style slob of a journalist working for the Washington Globe, which (of course) has just been taken over by a faceless multi-national and profit-driven corporation. McAffrey starts investigating an apparently drug-related double-shooting on the streets of DC, while his young blogger colleague at the Internet edition of the Globe, Della Frye (Rachel McAdams), start poking around the apparent suicide of an aid for the rising young Senator Steven Collins (Ben Affleck).

It turns out that the death of the Senator's aid and the street-level shootings are related (of course), and Collins joins forces with Frye (cue the yawningly expected young / old; traditional / digital; ink / blog tensions) to unravel the evil behind the deaths.

Senator Collins was (of course) having an affair with his aid before she died. He also happens to have been the college roommate of McAffrey. Collins is also just about to open investigative hearings into an evil Blackwater-style mercenary conglomorate. And Collins' wife (Robin Wright Penn) once slept with McAffrey. And the Globe's editor (Helen Mirren) is torn between the need to deliver good journalism and the need to satisfy the new owners' lust for profit.

In other words, there are enough contrived layers of connective tissue between the characters' personal lives and today's real headlines to keep the plot moving, generally in a forward direction.

Let's not ask to look too much at the details of the movie, where the journalists are significantly more competent at crime-solving than the police, and professional assassins are outsmarted by over-weight journalists, and particularly let's not look too closely at the muddled ending, where the plot desperately tries to add one more sharp twist, but can only conjure up a damp tissue.

What keeps State of Play on the safe side of over-cooked is the talent on display. Crowe, Affleck, Mirren, McAdams, and Wright Penn are very watchable, and all do their bit to round out their characters. Even Jason Bateman and Jeff Daniels make an appearance and are effective in relatively small roles.

Kevin MacDonald, best known for The Last King of Scotland, directs with a slightly jittery hand-held style, enough to maintain an edge without being too annoying.

For those who enjoy good acting talent, State of Play is watchable, if not terribly memorable.







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