Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in Chicago, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
The Pledge (2000)
Director: Sean Penn
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Adapted from a book by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Penn's cop thriller-cum-psycho-drama is ambitious but deeply flawed. Nicholson is mostly impressive as the cop whose retirement is effectively blown by the news of the horrendous killing of an eight-year-old girl. But Penn's occasionally flashy direction of a contrived, often clichéd script all too happy to toss in a shoal of red herrings progressively undermines his efforts as the story (literally) unravels. It's just about credible that the cop would stand by his promise to the dead girl's mother to solve the mystery, but by the time he encounters Del Toro's retarded redskin (dubious indeed) and Mirren's psychologist (who profiles the murderer and his probable future actions after looking at the child's painting!), we're deep into movie madness, and the rest is hokum. Chris Menges' camerawork, however, remains effective.Author: GA
Cast & crew
Director: Sean Penn
Producer: Michael Fitzgerald, Sean Penn, Elie Samaha
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Benicio Del Toro, Aaron Eckhart, Helen Mirren, Tom Noonan, Robin Wright Penn, Vanessa Redgrave, Mickey Rourke, Sam Shepard, Lois Smith, Harry Dean Stanton full cast
Genre(s): Thrillers
Duration: 124 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
Gray's anatomy
James Gray wants to push buttons—again.
The next big thing?
Gigantic Releasing tries to rethink indie distribution…without movie theaters.
Red Diva: Lyubov Orlova, First Lady of Soviet Cinema
So you think you can dance, comrade?
Puppet master
Coraline director Henry Selick takes stop-motion animation into 3-D.
Socratic method
Laurent Cantet's approach on the set matches the message of his film.
Wander woman
Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy puts a Bush-era spin on the road movie.
Oscars
Read our interviews with the nominees, our reviews of the nominated films and more.
What do you think?
Post your review now