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The Pledge (2001)

Rate: 2
Viewed: 3/08

Pledge
3/08: Here we go again with Sean Penn's fucked-up interpretation of the world.

I went through it once in The Crossing Guard, and that was enough already. Jack Nicholson comes back for another round and tries to confuse me in his own manipulative way. The title seems appropriate because it's what Sean Penn got out of his friends by allowing them to have a five-minute cameo. The examples are as follows:

Sam Shepard shows up for a few minutes, pretending not to believe what the lead character says. Harry Dean Stanton sits in his chair, so he can accept an offer to move out of Nevada for Arizona. Benicio del Toro does his yoga breathing exercises while sporting a long-black wig before shooting himself in the mouth. Mickey Rourke has a chance to imitate Sean Penn for a minute by breaking down to cry. Helen Mirren takes a moment to ask the lead character, "Are you still sexually active?" Tom Noonan is reincarnated as Mr. Francis Dollarhyde. Aaron Eckhart gets to break all the rules of a proper police interrogation.

Have I left out anybody else? And if I did, who cares? The plot has been done over and over and over: backwards, forward, backwards, and forward. And the ending? It sucks and is a pretentious attempt by Sean Penn to make his pseudo-intellectual film appear deep.

Questioning the tactics employed by Jerry Black, I think he could've saved a lot of time by grilling the deceased girl's friend about the picture of a potential suspect. Instead, he drops her and does it the hard way. How about a DNA test? By the way, why would Jerry Black buy a gas station? What's the point when he can set up a lemonade stand for a week and count the moving cars? Why is Jerry ignored when he has seniority with years of experience only to be pushed over by some young know-nothing detective?

All in all, don't bother with The Pledge because when you reach the end, Sean Penn will make you feel like shit for watching it in the first place.