VEILED THREATS by Phil Mershon
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      • Notorious
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      • The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
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THE PLEDGE
Directed by Sean Penn
Written by Jerzy Kromolowski and Mary Olson-Kromolowski
Starring Jack Nicholson, Patricia Clarkson, Benicio Del Toro, Robin Wright
Released 2001
Picture
  One of the true joys of watching a movie can be the way we forget that we are watching a movie. The people who ran the cameras, the actors, the writers, the lighting specialists, the grip, the best boy, the script doctors, the casting directors, the make-up artists, the folks in charge of marketing: these people and dozens more go into the creation of a film. Yet, sometimes, if everyone involved soars and we are blessed with some dandy fine luck, the movie pulls us in while we project ourselves onto a character on screen and next thing you know, we are no longer watching a picture. We are on the edges of something real. 
    For most of the 2001 film, The Pledge, that is exactly what is happening. Director Sean Penn brought together some of the great talents of modern film, hooked them onto a script based on a novella by Friedrich Durrenmatt, and exercised what feels like the patience of the guy who wrote the story of Job in showing us a tale that hits on more than a few levels, some emotional, some cerebral, some artistic.
    Jack Nicholson plays Jerry Black, a retiring police detective working in Nevada. With six hours left on the job and during his retirement party, Jerry offers to assist in an investigation of the brutal murder of a young girl. The police have a witness to the immediate after effects of the crime, a young boy who never says much, but who admits he has seen a tall Native American in a maroon truck leaving the scene of the crime. The police pick up the suspect, a man who turns out to be mentally retarded. 
    Here is where this movie becomes occasionally fascinating. Just when we suspect that we know (from our experience as viewers of many a police drama) just what is going to happen, we encounter all these whacked out characters. First we meet Stan, a competent, competitive pretty boy played by Aaron Eckhart. We suspect he is a foil for Jerry, yet he does the retired detective favors above and beyond the call of duty, suggesting that Stan has, at a minimum, a grudging respect for the old timer. Then we meet Annalise Hansen, otherwise known as Vanessa Redgrave, and we can't decide if the old woman is crazy as a loon or simply in awe over the death of her grandchild. In turn, the child's parents feel a bit deranged, although, again, we can't be sure. Indeed, throughout the film, it becomes more and more challenging to work out in our collective minds whether we are seeing the characters the way they are or the way Jerry sees them. 
    It turns out that some strikingly similar crimes have been committed over the previous few years and Jerry, though retired, becomes obsessed with keeping his promise to the murdered girl's mother that he will solve the case. He meets with Mickey Rourke, who plays the institutionalized father of one of the other victims. He buys a gas station from Harry Dean Stanton, who takes his family to Arizona. And he meets a charming bartender named Lori, played to positive perfection by Robin Wright. Lori has a young daughter who reminds Jerry of the victim. 
    It is Jerry's obsession with the crime and the way this obsession parallels his own apparent psychological disintegration that moves the movie along. Well, that and the fact that we are privileged to encounter some of the finest acting talent all in the same motion picture, even if Rourke and Stanton are not given all that much to do. Ultimately, it's Nicholson and Wright who lock up the magnificence of this film by appearing to be the farthest thing in the world from "movie stars." It's hard work being this good and everyone involved shines without yielding to the impulse to sparkle. 
    We get clever camera work that does not announce itself as such. We get a chase scene that involves cattle. We get nothing that we expect and everything we want.
    Mostly what we get is characterization, probably the most difficult thing to pull off in a movie, where time constraints demand that a mere gesture imply things about the person on screen. Nicholson, who elsewhere on occasion has merged nuance with mugging for the camera, is as unself-conscious here as in any role he has ever done. When he meets Lori the bartender, we hope they will get together, and despite a certain contrived approach to this, we feel satisfied when it happens and never question any of their motives.
    Still, the dead girl's parents show up in this new town.
    The boy who saw the Indian leaving the scene of the crime rides by in a parade.
    And Jerry meets a psychiatrist who asks him if he hears voices.
    A few items never quite get resolved, most of them involving the dead girl's family, as well as the real identity of the killer, although here we are given enough information to make a very good guess. Maybe that doesn't matter anyway because this movie does not focus on facts so much as it does perceptions: those of the actors, the characters they play, the way we in the audience see them. Perceptions are all we have, as human beings. We can never be much more than dutiful agnostics, knowing that we can't know anything for certain, yet doomed to exist in a world that demands we pretend to be sure of everything. It's just that kind of tug between forces that drives a man like Jerry Black to madness. It may even be something we recognize in ourselves. ​
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  • Home
  • Links
  • The Deluge
    • Veiled Threats >
      • 1939-1945
      • 1946-1963
      • 1964-1975
      • 1976-1985
      • Born Losers
      • Don't Look Back
      • Bonnie and Clyde
      • Cool Hand Luke
      • The Graduate
      • Up Tight!
      • Cycle Savages
      • Wild in the Streets
      • Never a Dull Moment
      • Yellow Submarine
      • Night of the Living Dead
      • Faces
      • The Love Bug
      • Midnight Cowboy
      • Easy Rider
      • Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
      • Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
      • They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
      • The Magic Christian
      • Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
      • The Landlord
      • The Ballad of Cable Hogue
      • Getting Straight
      • The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
      • Five Easy Pieces
      • Godard in America
      • Gimme Shelter
      • Little Big Man
      • The Boys in the Band
      • Joe
      • The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
      • The Big Boss
      • There's a Girl in my Soup
      • The Liberation of L B Jones
      • Klute
      • The French Connection
      • Willie Dynamite
      • Helter Skelter
      • King: A Filmed Record
      • Get Carter
      • Harold and Maude
      • Panic in Needle Park
      • Across 110th Street
      • And Soon the Darkness
      • Deliverance
      • Rolling Thunder
      • Super Fly
      • Busting
      • The Ruling Class
      • The Harder They Come
      • Day of the Jackal
      • Play Misty For Me
      • The Jezebels
      • Sacco & Vanzetti
      • Badlands
      • Cold Turkey
      • Soldier Blue
      • American Graffiti
      • The Falcon and the Snowman
      • Watership Down
      • Scarecrow
      • Walking Tall
      • Frances
      • The Coca-Cola Kid
      • Bob Roberts
      • Bad Company
      • We Are Marshall
      • Patton
      • The Natural
      • The Crossing Guard
      • Reds
      • The Spook Who Sat by the Door
      • Mud
      • Who is Harry Nilsson
      • Ornette: Made in America
      • Six Degrees of Separation
      • This Film is Not Yet Rated
      • Incident at Oglala
      • That Championship Season
      • The Pope of Greenwich Village
      • Little Murders
      • Assault on Precinct 13
      • Capote
      • Inglourious Basterds
      • The Friends of Eddie Coyle
      • Scorpio
      • The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
      • A New Leaf
      • Seven Psychopaths
      • The Last House on the Left
      • The Deer Hunter
      • Let the Right One In
      • Colour Me Kubrick
      • A Time to Kill
      • A Scanner Darkly
      • Salem's Lot
      • Roman Polanksi: Wanted and Desired
      • The Seven-Ups
      • The Contender
      • Hoffa
      • The Pledge
      • American: The Bill Hicks Story
      • Donnie Brasco
      • Bugsy
      • Milk
      • Reservoir Dogs
      • Glengarry Glen Ross
      • V for Vendetta
      • Trumbo
      • Two in the Wave
      • South of the Border
      • Into the Abyss
      • God Bless America
  • Before the Deluge
    • The Bicycle Thief
    • Judgment at Nuremberg
    • Five Minutes to Live
    • The Manchurian Candidate
    • Hud
    • Pressure Point
    • Blow Up
    • Requiem for a Heavyweight
    • Hurry Sundown
  • Human Flood
    • Jean-Luc Godard >
      • Breathless
      • Masculine Feminine
      • Film Socialisme
    • Brian De Palma >
      • Sisters
      • The Fury
    • Stanley Kubrick >
      • Lolita
      • 2001: A Space Odyssey
      • A Clockwork Orange
      • The Shining
      • Full Metal Jacket
    • Francis Coppola >
      • The Conversation
      • Apocalypse Now
    • Woody Allen >
      • Take the Money and Run
      • Bananas
      • Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But were Afraid to Ask
      • Sleeper
      • Love and Death
      • Annie Hall
      • Interiors
      • Manhattan
      • Stardust Memories
      • Zelig
      • Broadway Danny Rose
      • The Purple Rose of Cairo
      • Hannah and Her Sisters
      • Radio Days
    • Robert Altman >
      • M*A*S*H
      • Brewster McCloud
      • 3 Women
      • Nashville
      • The Gingerbread Man
      • Ready to Wear
      • Gosford Park
      • The Player
    • Luis Bunuel >
      • The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
    • Roman Polanski >
      • Cul-de-Sac
      • Rosemary's Baby
      • MacBeth
      • The Tenant
    • Martin Scorsese >
      • Boxcar Bertha
    • Steven Spielberg >
      • Duel
    • Oliver Stone >
      • Talk Radio
    • Orson Welles >
      • F For Fake
    • Akira Kurosawa >
      • DODES'KA-DEN
    • Max Ophuls
    • John Ford >
      • The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
    • John Huston
    • Frank Capra
    • Billy Wilder
    • Roger Corman
    • Bernardo Bertolucci
    • Elia Kazan
    • William Wyler
    • Spike Lee
    • Francois Truffaut >
      • 400 Blows
      • Jules and Jim
      • Bed and Board
    • Jean Renoir
    • Federico Fellini
    • Charlie Chaplin
    • John Cassavetes
    • Agnes Vargas
    • Alain Resnais
    • Eric Rohmer >
      • Claire's Knee
    • Ida Lupino
    • Leni Riefenstahl
    • Penny Marshall
    • Costa-Gavras >
      • The Confession
      • Missing
    • Alfred Hitchcock >
      • Spellbound
      • Shadow of a Doubt
      • The Birds
      • I Confess
      • Dial M for Murder
      • Rear Window
      • To Catch a Thief
      • The Wrong Man
      • Suspicion
      • Saboteur
      • Lifeboat
      • Notorious
      • Rope
      • North by Northwest
      • Psycho
      • The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
  • No Particular Place to Go
  • The Pits
    • The Big Chill
    • W. C. Fields and Me
    • Zabriskie Point
    • Eat The Document
    • Hitler: The Last Ten Days
    • A Boy and His Dog
    • A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
    • The Executioner's Song
    • The Visitors
    • Paul McCartney Really is Dead
    • Going Places
    • Pi
    • Erik the Viking
    • Sometimes They Come Back
    • Thinner
    • Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
    • A Bullet for Pretty Boy
  • Links