The Pledge

[poliphilo]

Jack Nicholson swears "on his soul's salvation" to track down the killer of a murdered girl. We later learn that he's not religious. So why does his promise gnaw away at him so?

There have been genuflections in front of this movie because-

a. It tries very hard not to be Hollywood.
b. Sean Penn (the director) is allegedly cool.
c. Nicholson is really rather good in it.

But the character doesn't make sense. He's avuncular, he's laid-back and in the last reel he suddenly goes stark, staring mad. Is he a good guy who's been fucked over by God or a seething nutcase who's been putting up a convincing front? We don't see anything of his inner life so how can we tell?

And if we don't know what's going on inside him, why should we care?

Somewhere at the back of all this there's a novel(?) by Friedrich Durrenmatt. I'm thinking that what's happened is that it used to be a story about a catholic guilt trip, but- for whatever reasons- they took the motor out.

Turning your back on Hollywood doesn't automatically make you European and deep.

Comments

[cdpoint.livejournal.com]

Durrenmatt's novel is about a fatal obsession, but the obsession is only superficially about finding an elusive killer. Durrenmatt's detective is really unable to deal with the randomness of a murder, and he sacrifices his soul for the possibility of finding the killer. The barmaid and her daughter are incidental to his obsession, and in the end he rots--while the real killer (a mental defective) is living just one town over.

I thought "The Pledge" started well, but it seemed Penn began to rush through things toward the end, as if he weren't confident in his viewers' ability to hang in with the story.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I got the feeling that Penn himself didn't know what the story was about. The film has the trappings of high seriousness, but no content.