The Pledge, directed by Sean Penn, focuses on Jerry Black (Jack Nicholson) who is a detective in Nevada about to retire. While at a retirement party set up for him, and hours away from officially being retired, Jerry decides to take on one last case, with the promise of finding the killer of a little girl. Taking a look back at my previous blogs on The Searchers and Hardcore, The Pledge also shares similarities between the two films. All three of these films revolve around a main male character who chases something or someone with true intentions hidden within, a characteristic best known as being an anti-hero When it came to addressing how The Searchers alone shared similarities with this film, ponder or take a look at how both start and end. In The Searchers, the beginning and ending is essentially the same, with the setting being a house, using frame-within-frame camera shot, and having Ethan and his relatives in it. When it comes to this movie, and in this case, the beginning and ending is exactly the same with Jerry drunkenly staggering lost in thought with the looks of pain, anguish, and crazed. Another similarity is that both of these films also use the same song in the beginning and at the end of the film as well. (For reference here are some shots and video clips!) Aside from the similar plot in search of something, I was able to catch another small, but cool similarity between Hardcore and The Pledge. Both directors used an intentional mirror camera shot. It is used in Hardcore when Jake is in the hotel room with Niki and when Wesley leaves Jake, once discovering where he's been and what his plans are, and as for this film, it (side mirror of a car) is used for a scene transition a steak house where Jerry's surprise retirement party is at. As Martin Montgomery puts it, a dialogue scene consists of "mid-shots, medium close-ups and close-ups." He goes on to explain that a mid-shot is needed for both character to figure to create a line of action, progressive focusing on the individuals speaking for close-up's, and at the end conclude with a mid-shot or two-shot to help close a scene off. This similar description of what a dialogue scene potentially is scene throughout the whole film, but one scene that sticks out to me is Lori (Robin Wright) confronting Jerry (starts at 1:55:22) once discovering his plan to use Chrissy (Pauline Roberts) as bait to catch the killer. Not only are those shots incorporated, but so were counter-shot's ('reaction shots') when showing Jerry's demeanor and facial expressions when Lori exclaiming thing like "You fucking bastard Jerry", "She's eight years old Jerry, she's only eight years old!" and "You're fucking crazy." From this scene and dialogue alone, viewers see a despondent, lost crazed look on Jerry's face who doesn't answer to any of what Lori is telling him. This scene clearly depicts Roger Elbert's description of "a man determined to prove something, at whatever cost. He is not proving it to others. He is proving it to himself." His need or obsession to prove that he is still a great detective, this validation of being a man and having an identity at all, costs him to hurt Lori, lose his high reputation with his past co-workers, and look like a fool. A lonely one. I'm a sucker for thriller films such as this one, but boy does the ending leave me with quite a few questions, alongside John Fraim, that other films within this genre would mostly answer. Like, will Jerry mend the relationship with Lori and Chrissy? Did he even love Lori to begin with? Will Jerry investigate the collision and make the connection that the killer planning to meet Chrissy is dead? Does Jerry prove that he was right all along? While I wish those questions could have been answered with a few more minutes of film, I have no doubt the ending was anything but intentional, and overall, it was executed well. So, if you like thrillers, such as myself, a fan of Jack Nicholson-or Sean Penn, or enjoy films that leave your imagination to fill in cliffhangers, The Pledge is definitely a film to watch.
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