When The Pledge begins, a nine-year-old girl is brutally killed during the winter in the snow-filled mountains near Reno. Detective Jerry Black (played by Jack Nicolson) of the Monash County police goes to the scene of the crime and collects evidence, learning that similar cases twice occurred in the last eight years. In doing so, Black exits from his retirement party after a distinguished career on the force, for this is his final case. Looking out the window of the police station before the party, he had seen an elderly gentleman in a walker, and he resolved that he would not waste away his golden years. When he meets the mother of the victim, Margaret Larson (played by Patricia Clarkson), he makes a solemn pledge before her crucifix to catch the criminal. According to the tagline, "Detective Jerry Black has made a promise he can't break, to catch a killer he can't find." Sheriff Eric Pollack (played by Sam Shepard) arranges to arrest a likely suspect, a Native American (played by Benicio Del Toro) who is mentally challenged. Through interrogation by the detective who replaced him (played by Aaron Eckhart), he confesses, but he commits suicide as he is being locked up. Case closed? The sheriff thinks so, but Black is not so sure. He knows that the confession was phony, and the suspect’s whereabouts at the approximate time of day on the date of the murder were later accounted for. A drawing by the victim before her death suggests that a tall man in a black car first befriended the girl and gave her presents, so Black believes that the man in the picture lured her to her death. A visit to a local psychiatrist, Annalise Hansen (played by Vanessa Redgrave), serves to confirm his suspicion, though he ducks a question that she poses about his obvious obsession with the case. Black decides to buy a gas station in the vicinity of the three killings, rather than flying to Baja for marlin fishing on a ticket provided by members of the police force, because he hopes to live up to his pledge. Lori, the female proprietor of a nearby café (played by Robin Wright Penn), has an eight-year-old daughter Chrissy (played by Pauline Roberts) who is perhaps the next victim of the serial killer. Black befriends both Lori and her daughter. One night Lori knocks on Black’s door to gain admittance after a savage beating by her husband (played by Brock Johnson). Black offers to provide shelter "with no strings attached" to her and her daughter, and in due course they become a happy family of sorts, with Black even reading children’s stories to Chrissy. Meanwhile, the serial killer, a preacher named Throm (played by Dale Dickey) who has various part-time jobs throughout the year, tries to make friends with Chrissy under Black’s watchful eyes, though Black does not alarm Lori about his plan to catch the serial killer. Indeed, Black, the inveterate fisherman, seems to enjoy dangling bait before the suspected killer. One day Throm sets up a suspicious rendezvous with Chrissy. Black asks the police to stake out the meeting place, a picnic table near a stream. When Throm does not arrive at the appointed time, the sheriff calls off the stakeout, declaring that Black must be crazy, and the sheriff tells Lori about what he believes to be a hoax by a madman. Lori returns to collect Chrissy and to lambaste Black for setting up such a dangerous manhunt that might easily have gone wrong, with her daughter killed. Throm, it turns out, was killed in an accident with a truck, but only filmviewers know that. Black, meanwhile, returns to his gas station, becomes an alcoholic, and goes mad. The Pledge, directed by Sean Penn, is based on the 1958 novel of the same title by the late Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt. The film version promises to be a thriller but instead ambles along at a European pace, featuring a beautiful outdoor setting, supposedly in the Nevada mountains (of Washoe County, as there is no Monash County), but actually in British Columbia. The film presents filmviewers with the snap judgments of police, the perils of not Mirandizing a suspect, the way in which a confession can be extorted from someone with limited intelligence, and by inference with the barbarity of capital punishment. But the primary focus of the story is on psychology, especially the thin line between sanity and insanity that begins with harmless fantasy in childhood, is masked by respectable occupations that cultivate obsessiveness, and continues in a society where delusions, entertainment, and hobbies are the primary alternatives to ennui. MH

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The Pledge
by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Joel Agee (translator)