The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Don't get me wrong, this film was interesting, but Sean Penn's pacing is just soooooooo darn slow! And well, the ending is just plain depressing. Watch at your peril.

A retiring police chief pledges to catch the killer of a young child. The Pledge is a powerful, slow and quite terrific drama that benefits from excellent work from Jack Nicholson in the main role but really good work from Sean Penn behind the camera. This film is truly a crime, drama and a damn good one plus the rest of the cast was also excellent especially Benicio Del Toro that although his role is small it's truly just magnificent. The movie as i said it's slow so you need to have patience threw out and believe me it does not disappoint with such a duo. (A+)

Believing that a vicious child killer is still on the loose, a retiring police detective takes residence in the area where he suspects the murderer lives and conducts his own private investigations in this Sean Penn directed crime thriller starring Jack Nicholson. The film benefits from an atmospheric Hans Zimmer score and Nicholson is solid in the lead role, visibly debilitated by his dedication to the case. His final scene is especially potent - though the film's single best performance comes from Mickey Rourke who steals the one scene he is in as a grieving father. Promising as all the might sound, 'The Pledge' is nevertheless is a hard film to endure at times because Nicholson's actions are constantly reprehensible, befriending a single mother with a young daughter that fits the killer's profile, and encouraging her daughter to buy a red dress (also fitting the killer's profile) in order to use the young girl as bait. The film also strays away from playing up the ambiguity of whether or not Nicholson's hunches are right. His evidence and clues are certainly quite sketchy, with a lot of assumptions made based on a single drawing by one young victim, but precious little time is spent on Nicholson or other characters being scrupulous of the evidence. The slow pacing of the material additionally leads to limited urgency/suspense. And yet, the scattered highly effective moments of the film are difficult to shake. A scene where Nichoslson pumps gas for the man who suspects of being the killer is nail-bitingly intense and the downbeat ending is hard to forget.

On the night of his retirement and during his retirement do police chief Jerry Black (Jack Nicholson) goes back out into the field to investigate the death of a young girl who was raped before being murdered. The police arrest Toby Jay Wadenah (Benicio Del Toro) for the little girl's murder and manage to extract a confession from him - albeit in a rather unethical manner. Despite the fact that the police are content that Wadenah was the man who killed the little girl Black isn't convinced and acting on a hunch, he comes back out of retirement and carries out his own investigations to try to track down the person who he believes is really responsible for the killing.As far as stories go this really isn't a bad one and certainly has enough intrigue and mystery about it to keep one invested in the story. Parts of the story are a little predictable - as soon as we learn that Wadenah has mental health problems it becomes fairly obvious that they've got the wrong man and this leads to Wadenah being interrogated by the police in a section of the film which dragged on for too long. Sadly, the film also suffers from many other clichés that we'd expect to see in the genre; retiring cop on 'one last job', one cop believing that the man they've got for the crime is innocent when no-one else believes him. I also felt that more interesting aspects of the story weren't given enough focus; Black's inner voices are mentioned and referred to now and again, but aren't really ever a focal point in the film which made these sections of the film seem a bit pointless (his therapy session with Helen Mirren is perhaps a good 'case in point'.In the second half of the film Black buys a gas station and goes undercover to try to track down the killer and this section of the film is definitely one of the weaker aspects in the film. The pace is notably slower at this point and again seems to be filled with pointlessly long and drawn out scenes (such as about 5 minutes spent watching Jack Nicholson fishing for example). It all amounts to filler as far as I'm concerned and adds up to very little and just makes the film longer than it needs to be.The ending is also rather unsatisfying and teases the audience into believe that there is going to be some spectacular showdown between Black and the killer but alas this never happens. Instead it seemed to offer more of a moral debate on whether Black went too far by using a little girl as bait to catch the killer - suggesting that a 'red mist' has descended whereby he's willing to flush out the killer regardless of the consequences.... This is interesting as a social statement but I still felt cheated as the film seemed to be building up to an exciting finale and never really got there. I suspect this may work for those after something 'thought-provoking' but won't really work for those looking for a straight-forward 'good triumphing over evil' story.All in all this was fairly interesting and intriguing film and is reasonably good in most respects, but I really wish that the film had ended on a stronger note.