Rating: 
Summary: The story is being told while you follow the "plot"
Review: Those poor souls who think a movie is "for entertainment purposes only" can only handle one narrow form of entertainment -- will the good guys win? This film not only answers this question -- the bad guy loses, but the good guys don't "win" -- it also takes in the world outside your movie theater (or home) as part of engaging you. Why did Penn linger so long on things unrelated to the mystery or chase? The answer is in the "long" -- he lets the settings and music lull you into wishing the whole crime could be forgotten, the hero could enjoy his retirement. We see the life any non-cop might enjoy. But since he's a cop, the world is still not "right" to him until he resolves this crime; then, perhaps, he may enjoy the beauty of the place he's chosen. At the same time, we understand how this beauty is threatened by crime; his choice may be inevitable. He does everything he knows is right, yet the world has its own way of resolving the problem without regard to his needs. The prologue doesn't "telegraph" or give away anything. It tells us not to expect the wrong resolution, and expect slick-suspense-movie action. Nicholson is obviously tormenting himself over something that went wrong, so that we can then watch for what he did to make it go wrong. That's the REAL mystery. He has a beautiful retired life, and a chance to use his skills to heal both a shattered family and his own misgivings at turning his job over to lesser men. Being a cop, he may not see it, but these hopes are in tension; whether or not he does anything about it. Being a cop, he sets himself up to pay a worse personal price than any of us might. He had thought of everything, planned masterfully; ... what WAS the problem? The pledge itself; not just the one over this crime, but the one he implicitly made when he first took the job. He cannot perfectly honor it. See how YOU would test yourself against it! The universe is harder than we are, but also more forgiving, a very hard lesson for the ultimate system of rational hopes: criminal justice. THAT'S why Penn takes his time: to let what's at stake sink in, and THAT'S what the film is about. And all this came to me solely through feeling it, as I watched. Penn's intuition is dead-on accurate.
Rating: 
Summary: One star rating too much!
Review: This has to be the worst movie I have ever seen. I went with my family to the theatre to see it. We all hated it, but said nothing through the movie, figuring it had to get better. It didn't.The plot stinks and the movie is boring even though the subject matter is intriguing. A retired detective who can't let go of a case he was working on - that of a serial killer who slays children. Sounds good right? Well, I can't even begin to explain how the director and writer took this idea and turned it into this movie. The whole thing is full of Jack Nicholson living in this little town with a woman he just met and her little girl. The town is depressing and dark, so is the woman and her little girl and for that matter so is Jack. That being said, that is the main crux of the movie - how dark and depressing everyone and everything is with just a hint of this serial killer mixed in. The ending is unbelievably stupid for a movie that is for entertainment purposes only. All in all out of the thousands of movies I have seen in my lifetime, this is the absolute worst. I would have demanded my money back at the time but I just wanted to get the heck out of the theatre by then !!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Tries too hard...
Review: Penn uses a bunch of stale directorial cliches, including the opening shots of Nicholson. Anyone who has ever seen a movie knew that this was foreshadowing of the ending of this picture. As a result, I spent the entire movie trying to figure out how (and when) Jack would end up in that scene. I say "when" because this is a long drawn out affair. I generally like dark,intelligent films, but this movie tries too hard to fit that through cinematography and character study. As a result, the actual storytelling suffers and is weak. There are significant holes in the storyline and ridiculous scenes to fill other holes in the storyline. A lot of good books fail to make the cross-over to film, especially those movies that are deep, third person character studies. I have not read the book but imagine that it is far better that the movie. I respectfully disagree with other reviewers who imply that people who do not like this movie "just don't get it". This is simply not a good movie in my opinion.
Rating: 
Summary: Too underrated
Review: Maybe I'm guilty of thinking that the average movie-going population is more intelligent than it really is. I guess that accounts for the reaction this movie has gotten. No, this is not your normal police-procedural movie. The plot is a clothesline for one character's descent into alcoholism and, more or less, insanity. I think the key is ironically what a lot of people complain about: the ending. Without giving anything away, when it comes down to it, Nicholson's detective was right all along. He played everything perfectly, but for a simple twist of fate, he ends up being the bad guy. Hey, that would probably drive me to the bottel too. Not perfect, but vastly underrated. I look forward to Penn's next behind-the-camera effort.
Rating: 
Summary: Unfocused.
Review: Whenever a film-maker adapts a book, especially one by a major writer, he has many different layers or angles to choose from. In Friedrich Durrenmatt's rich and suggestive novel 'the Pledge', Sean Penn could have chosen from: a tense detective story about a child-killer; a deconstruction of detective stories (and narrative itself), its assumptions, methods and iconography; a study of mental breakdown, the limits of reason in a rational society, and of a man who has lived a long professional life and begins to wonder what it all meant; a portrait of a rural community and its relationship to a bureaucratic, indifferent urban centre; the terrible fears, in a regimented, air-brushed, famously peaceful and neutral country, of madness, criminality and violence; the obstacles of Absurdity and Chance scuppering all man's progress. By virtue of filming the novel, Penn touches on most of these subjects, but doesn't really seem interested in any of them. It's not that he needs to be rigorously faithful to the book - indeed, the more faithful a literary adaptation, the duller it usually is. Durrenmatt's novel itself was a reworking of a much more conventional screenplay he wrote for a Swiss film, so he knew what was or wasn't possible in the cinema. But this 'Pledge' lacks focus. If I hadn't read the book, I wouldn't have been able to follow the film half the time. Penn isn't remotely interested in the crime genre - not only does this give the film a sluggish pace, but the whole idea of a detective losing the one thing that defines his status and power (his mind) lacks the emotional resonance you get in, say, 'Touch of Evil' or 'Vertigo'. Penn, casting Sam Shepherd and Harry Dean Stanton is clearly trying to create a kind of mythic American epic like 'Paris Texas' (whose narrative he bleakly reverses), but what's he saying? what are we supposed to feel or recognise? There are occasionally interesting sequences (such as the interrogation of the Indian like the sexual abuse he's been accused of). The symbolism is heavy-handed, and the performances from an amazing cast are uniformly atrocious, with the exceptions of Aaron Eckhart and Stanton. And Jack, the one reason 'Pledge' remains at all watchable, keeping all the mysteries of motivation and feeling to himself, and all the more intriguing for that.
Rating:
Summary: The Pledge DVD, with ending discussed
Review: This *is* a very different movie in the cop vs. serial killer genre. If you want a formula movie with a formula 3rd Act (plot twists that lead to ultimate victory), then look elsewhere. Sean Penn has created a movie that starts routine, with a rich character study by Jack Nicholson, as the almost-retired Reno Detective Jerry Black. Jack Nicholson as a world-weary retiree is a joy to behold -- as he gazes on old photos of himself (clever cut-and-pastes using the young Jack Nicholson we know, placed in photos ... him with his Vietnam buddies, him getting a police medal), we see the evolution of Jack Nicholson, who puts his all into the very wise and flawed Detective Black. Starting with a formula idea, -- that the conventional wisdom of who-did-it is wrong, --- and that even in retirement, Det. Black is continuing the hunt for the real killer, -- the film leads you down a conventional path and then jumps the track in Act 3, becoming a study in how things derail in real life, and how in real life tidy storybook endings may be the exception. The ending is a dark and disquieting one, satisfying only in that the killer is stopped (although by an unexpected means). It *is* worth discussing the specifics of the ending, so if you don't want the ending spoiled for you, READ NO FURTHER. Det. Black discovers that the killer goes after 7 year old blonde girls wearing red dresses. The killer's m.o. is that he first establishes a relationship with the victim (as a magical "Wizard"), and gives them little gifts, and gains their confidence over time, and then finally ritualistically sexually assaulting them and butchering them. The killer is tall and drives a dark station wagon. Det. Black, a fisherman, foregoes buying a lakeside cabin, and instead buys a gas station (to track local vehicles, and tall guys). By happenstance, he takes in a battered wife and her 7 year old blonde girl. Without letting them in on his plans, he sets up a swing-set at roadside for the girl to play on (to attract the killer), and says nothing when the girl picks out a red dress at a clothing store. Without the mothers' consent, he thus sets up the girl as bait. By luck, the killer makes contact (the girl announces to Black, chillingly, "I've met the Wizard"), and sets up a meeting with the girl at a local park. Black then convinces his Reno swat team buddies to set up a surveillance, and they all wait for the killer to show. Right here, the off-beat ending starts: The killer, unbeknownst to all, has a head-on collision on the highway, on the way to the park, and is dead. The swat team leaves, in disgust, believing that Black has led them on an insane goose chase. The girl's mother show up and breaks off her relationship with Black, rightly accusing him of manipulating her and her daughter into being unknowing bait. Black descends into an alcoholic insanity, and the ending shows him jabbering incoherently at the sky, his life in ruins. So this ending is way unsatisfying for formula viewers -- if I was at the movies and wanted to feel good upon departure, I'd feel cheated. However, the acting throughout is superb, and is the movie's salvation: Patricia Clarkson is intense as the mother of the first dead girl who extracts Jack's/Black's pledge to find the killer. Mickey Rourke is intense as a dead girl's father who fully explains the intensity with which he misses his dead daughter. Aaron Eckhart plays Det. Stan Krolak (Black's last partner) with a beautiful intensity. Eckhart has a gift for playing intense and not-so-bright characters (he was great as sleezy Del Sizemore in Nurse Betty), and his finger countdown from "3", boasting how fast he will extract a confession from a "slow" Indian (B. Del Toro), is a classic moment of bravado. So even though the script trashes a feel good ending, the acting is wonderful, -- on balance, this is a great film (buy it!), but if (especially after 9-11-01) you want a feel-good ending, you will be let down. The other let down is that the DVD is minimal -- no special features other than the trailer (I would have loved to hear a director's commentary with Sean Penn and Jack Nicholson) -- but the tranfer to DVD is crisp, both video and audio quality is excellent.
Rating:
Summary: I Don't Know Why People Say This Movie is Bad
Review: This movie is not bad. It's actually very good. One person on the reveiw list gave it one star. This movie is good enough for five. The movie is well down. Sean Penn has made a very good movie. Jack Nicholson was very good in it. The movie has great music and a very good ending. Don't listen to whoever says it's a bad movie. They just don't know a good movie when they see it.
Rating:
Summary: Not good (or has that review title been used here already?)
Review: Other reviewers have noted the brevity of several great actors' scenes, but Mr. Del Toro's scene at the jail was at least twice as long as it should have been. There was some fairly good work here by some excellent actors--which was outweighed by ridiculous camerawork and editing. The attempts at surrealism were more often tedious and annoying. There were just too many such "Oliver Stone Moments", which gave me the impression that the main focus of the directing was on gimmickry--rather than on story-telling. Speaking of the story, that was a bit weak, too. Why did the film end the way it did? I could see no logic or cause/effect relationship between the events in the final scenes. What motivated the detective to run to the child's mother? Either he thought there was danger, or he didn't. Wierd, and disturbing? Yes. Thought-provoking? Yes. It provoked the thought, "Why have I wasted my time and money?"
Rating:
Summary: Not a good thriller or character study
Review: Sorry, but I have to disagree with those who say this movie was an excellent character study, if not a thriller. I love Jack Nicholson as an actor, but in this movie, I had no idea what motivated him. There wasn't enough dialogue or interaction with other characters or sense of his past history to give us a clue as to why he was pursuing this "obsession". For that matter, he didn't look that obsessed...except when it came to fishing. As for the directing, it was actually very cliched. When Jack goes to tell the parents their daughter was murdered and the camera pulls away to show the scene without sound, I thought, "I've seen this in a hundred movies." I could just see Sean in the background, yelling, "Okay, get another close-up of the turkeys!" Pulease! As for the ending, it simply was not satisfying. A movie can end tragically, but there should at least be a sense of satisfaction and resolution. I think there was a terrific movie in here that was dying to get out, but nobody would let it.
Rating:
Summary: Harrowing and difficult movie
Review: If you like to come out of a movie with a warm, glowing, fuzzy feeling, give this one a wide berth. "The Pledge" has the conviction not to succumb to the usual Hollywood ending - but neither is it contrived in avoiding stereotypes. One of the big problems the film had, I guess, is that it was marketed as a thriller. It is nothing of the sort. There's no action chases, no gunfights, and no simple resolution. Instead it's about the protagonist's slow slip into obsession, to the point where he commits a moral crime himself in his monomaniac crusade. A happy ending would have betrayed this (although, for those interested, the novel by Friedrich Dürrenmatt has an even bleaker ending).
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