The Pledge: Sean Penn

Sean Penn's The Pledge begins like a police procedural. During his retirement party, Police Detective Jerry Black is called to a crime scene where the body of a young girl has been found. When Black delivers the news to the girl's parents, the mother makes him swear on a cross that he will find her murderer. After the police department pins the murder on a local retarded Indian who commits suicide in their station, the case is closed. But Black still isn't convinced. What follows is an introspective journey into Blake's tortured psyche. Here is a man who driven by demons of his own design. He buys a gas station near a local lake and sets up a permanent vigil for people who fit the description of the killer. He befriends a single mother and her young daughter. It seems like he has finally learned to love and move on. Or has he? This is a film that delights in subverting audience and genre expectations. Even more impressively, Penn almost never reveals his true intentions through dialogue. Horrific revelations about Black are revealed through simple cinematic visual language. The film is full of jarring red herrings. These only serve to demonstrate Black's mental torment. He mistakes a local minister for a ruthless serial killer. When the girl momentarily disappears during a local fair, Black assumes that she has been abducted. There is a fantastic line early in the film that could serve as its mantra. When Blake is with the dead girl's parents, the mother despairs, "There can't be such devils out there." Blake responds, "There are such devils." Regardless of whether or not they exist, Blake can't help but see them everywhere he turns. The Pledge is such a well-crafted, intelligent film that I found myself replaying scenes in my mind while I tried to sleep. Lines of dialogue haunted my dreams, much as imaginary demons plague Black. That is, of course, if his demons are imaginary in the first place. But regardless, the important thing is that Black believes them to be real. And through his actions, he makes them come to life.

9/10