The Pledge (film)

Retired police detective Jerry Black (Jack Nicholson) is seen mumbling to himself, apparently drunk, sitting on a bench outside a disused gas station. The scene then shifts to events in the recent past. The Department has thrown him a retirement party, and the police captain gives Jerry a fishing trip in Mexico as a gift. The party is interrupted by the discovery of a murdered child, Ginny Larsen. Jerry decides to go with another detective, Stan Krolak (Aaron Eckhart), to the scene of the crime.

Jerry delivers the bad news to the child's parents, and the mother Margaret Larsen (Patricia Clarkson) makes Jerry swear on a cross that he will find the killer. A suspect is found the next day. Stan goes in to interview the suspect, Toby Jay Wadenah (Benicio del Toro), a Native American man with mental retardation. During the interview, the man eventually confesses but steals a gun from one of the deputies and commits suicide. To the other detectives, the case is over, but Jerry does not think that Wadenah was the killer.

Jerry is adamant about his pledge to find the killer, and does not go on the fishing trip. Instead, he visits the victim's grandmother, who tells him of the many stories that Ginny told. A later visit to one of her friends reveals that Ginny had a friend she called "The Giant". Jerry sees a picture Ginny drew of "The Giant", but it does not resemble Wadenah, and includes a black station wagon and not a red truck drove by Wadenah. He takes the drawing with him.

Jerry goes to Stan and asks him to reopen the case. Stan refuses but gets Jerry more information about similar cases in the area. Jerry's investigations reveal three unsolved and similar cases that Wadenah could not have committed. Jerry presents his research and Ginny's drawing to Captain Pollack (Sam Shepard) and Stan, who are doubtful.

While fishing, Jerry notices a gas station that is located near the center of the similar cases. After buying the gas station, Jerry moves into the house behind it and meets local waitress/bartender Lori (Wright Penn), and her daughter, Chrissy. He becomes a regular and they become friends. One night, Lori shows up at Jerry's house, bruised and battered, and explains her ex (who has a restraining order) attacked her.

Jerry suggests for her and her daughter's safety that they move in with him temporarily and she agrees. Jerry slowly becomes a father figure to her daughter and on one night as he is reading bedtime stories to Chrissy, Lori overhears them and goes to her room to cry, presumably realizing how badly she and her daughter needed a good man like this in their life. Jerry later overhears the crying, enters her bedroom to comfort her, and they end up spending the night together, beginning a romance.

Soon, Chrissy becomes friends with a local pastor, Gary Jackson (Tom Noonan). Jerry is uncomfortable about this and begins to think Jackson is the killer. Chrissy is shown meeting a man driving a black car with a toy porcupine hanging on the rear mirror, porcupines being another aspect of Ginny's drawing that Jerry believes to be a clue. Chrissy explains to Jerry that she met a 'wizard' who gave her porcupine candies and told her not to tell her parents they had met. She figured it was OK to tell Jerry, since he is not her father. Jerry realizes this is the killer and, using Chrissy as bait, stages an operation, with Stan's help, to catch him.

A car is shown driving with a toy porcupine hanging from the rear-view mirror. The woman who owns the chocolate shop is shown searching for "Oliver", implying that he is the killer. After hours of waiting, Stan and the other police leave. They tell Lori what happened, and she confronts Jerry angrily about putting her daughter in danger. The car that was shown approaching is seen destroyed in a fiery collision with a freight truck.

Some time later, reprising the first images shown at the beginning, Jerry sits alone on a bench in front of the ruined gas station. Despondent, destitute and drunk, Jerry ends up all alone, mumbling to himself that the killer is still out there.

• Jack Nicholson as Jerry Black
• Patricia Clarkson as Margaret Larsen
• Benicio del Toro as Toby Jay Wadenah
• Aaron Eckhart as Stan Krolak
• Helen Mirren as Doctor
• Tom Noonan as Gary Jackson
• Robin Wright Penn as Lori
• Vanessa Redgrave as Annalise Hansen
• Mickey Rourke as Jim Olstad
• Sam Shepard as Eric Pollack
• Harry Dean Stanton as Floyd Cage
• Dale Dickey as Strom
• Costas Mandylor as Monash Deputy
• Michael O'Keefe as Duane Larsen
• Lois Smith as Helen Jackson
• Brittany Tiplady as Becky Fiske
• Eileen Ryan as Jean

The film was shot mainly on location in the British Columbia interior. While the opening scenes were filmed in Reno, Nevada, the rest of the film was shot in Keremeos, Princeton, Hedley, Merritt and Lytton, all in British Columbia.

The film was released on DVD and VHS on June 19, 2001.[3]

• Official website
• The Pledge on IMDb
• The Pledge at Box Office Mojo
• The Pledge at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Pledge at Metacritic