Stars: Jack Nicholson, Helen Mirren, Michael O'Keefe, Mickey Rourke, Aaron Eckhart, Sam Shepard, Vanessa Redgrave, Patricia Clarkson, Robin Wright, Dale Dickey, Tom Noonan, Harry Dean Stanton, Lois Smith, Costas Mandylor, Benicio Del Toro, Pauline Roberts

Director: Sean Penn

Summary: On the night of his retirement Jerry Blake promises the mother of a murdered girl that he will find her killer. He buys a filling station and searches for a tall man using clues from a drawing by the dead girl...

Director Sean Penn's (THE INDIAN RUNNER, THE CROSSING GUARD) third film features Jack Nicholson as Jerry Black, a retired detective whose final case ultimately causes his slow descent into madness. In the midst of his retirement party, Black decides to join Detective Stan Krolak (Aaron Eckhart) on one last case. The molested body of an eight-year-old girl is found in the Nevada mountains. When the chief suspect turns out to be a mentally challenged Native American (Benicio Del Toro), Black is not convinced of his guilt despite his confession. Unable to forget the promise he made to the dead girl's mother that he would find her daughter's killer, Black becomes determined to catch a monster that no one else believes is out there. His resolve increases when he realizes that two similar unsolved murders occurred in the same area in recent years, and the case hits closer to home when Black befriends Lori (Robin Wright Penn), a waitress with a threatening ex-husband, and her eight-year old daughter, Chrissy (Pauline Roberts). Nicholson is compelling in this study of a man whose obsession slowly eats away at his sanity as he attempts to keep his promise by any means necessary.

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The Pledgeis the latest offering from Sean Penn, and as in Crossing Guardhe chooses Jack Nicholson as his leading man. Nicholson is detective Jerry Black, a respected and well-liked veteran of the Reno police force retiring to a life of angling with more than a little apprehension. Thus he jumps into a murder case, the slaying of a little girl, a mere six hours from retirement and makes a promise to the grieving mother to catch the killer. As his partner (an effectively abrasive Aaron Eckhart) squeezes a confession out of the severely mentally handicapped suspect (a thoroughly unsettling performance by Benicio Del Toro), Jerry is convinced that they've got the wrong man. As with Sean Penn's previous work, this is an actors' piece. Nicholson plays Jerry as having a restlessness under his easy-going, smiling calm and Del Toro, Helen Mirren, Vanessa Redgrave and Mickey Rourke make striking impressions in their single-scene appearances. Penn is less concerned with the mystery than the emotional turmoil and Jerry's state of mind, interrupting moments of calm with jagged cuts and discomforting images (including some especially disturbing crime scene photos). Jerry's instincts and methods are sound and his sensitivity is real--he takes in a battered single mom (Robin Wright Penn) and her little girl, and develops a rewarding family life--but his passion for justice turns to unhealthy, destructive obsession. That's ultimately what we're left with at the conclusion of this often off-putting but ultimately fascinating film. The truth will not always set you free.--Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com

Aspect Ratio:	2.35 Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Interactive Menus, Scene Access, Trailer
Subtitles:	Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish
Year:	2001
Release Date:	April 15, 2002
Runtime:	119 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	D 021348
Label:	Morgan Creek
Keywords:	Off, General, Wide, Screen, Drama, Schedule, Pledge
Genre:	Drama