The Pledge - Movie Review

I have watched some great, mediocre and WTF's Jack Nicholson movies and all of them have not brought any slight disappointment when it comes to his acting. 

The Pledge is just one of his films that not only either rekindle your admiration of Jack it would definitely make you an instant fan. What is great about "The Pledge" is that it is directed by Sean Penn (Yes! the actor who played Harvey Milk. I never really realize after searching about this movie that he is also a director)

It's a story of Jerry Black (Jack Nicholson), a retired Police officer who on his send-off party was disturbed by a sudden report of a murder. Some of the scenes wanted to convey the incompetence of Jerry's predecessors and it became apparent that he wanted to get involve and have it as his last assignment. Hollywood's societal conditioning of having a POC as the main suspect is very depressing, especially the character was a mentally unstable Indian played by the handsome Benicio Del Toro. 

A great scene when Jerry was waiting for his plane and he is having some sort of anxiety, depicted by the chaotic images in the airport amplified by the great musical cues and Jerry's inner voices, then everything went silent as the clock tick on his time of flight, allowing us to understand that Jerry's characters has finally made a decision and as the camera gets wider from the Plane we saw Jerry finishing his beer making it clear that he is still not over with the case.

He came back and started working on his own unofficial investigation when his former comrades are already uninterested. Along his venture for vendetta, he had collected cliche clues that are easy for the viewers to empathize with Jerry. 

There are a lot of cameos in this film, and all of them has leveled with Jack's. One scene in particular that stole my heart is Mickey Rourke's. He definitely made that 2 minutes worthwhile.

Another Hollywood cliche that again brought disappointment with me is when they added some romance in it. But I think it was part of the story since The movie is the 5th film adaptation from a same-titled crime novel by a Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt. I looked up The Cold Light of Day (1996) and it has some subdued ending which thank whatever-God-you-believed-in they did not recreated. It would have made it a cheesy film. 

But, I still think there won't have any difference even if they decided to change the relationship between Lori (Wright Penn) and Jerry.

The ending was traumatic, kinda scary and sad but also realistic and even when they showed the killer, we are still unsure who he was, one thing that we are sure though is that Jerry is having some sort of  PTSD  and some fear of  being senile and futile. And it became apparent that the whole movie is all about Jerry and never about the crime or the killer.

Aside from Jack Nicholson's acting, I also liked the musical score, it gel the whole film's emotions from suspense and the cringey jovial mood after Jerry got laid. ;D

I still have 2 Jack Nicholson's movie on my watch list and I can't wait.