I've noticed that a lot of "artsy" types of movies (based perhaps on a Life Is Meaningless Tale by an eminent existentialist writer) allow themselves a certain studied artificiality in screenwriting and acting which may even be intended as dramatically subversive, like characters breaking out of the scene into the movie studio in a Fellini film. As regards THE PLEDGE, I'm referring to the crucial scene in which Nicholson's cop character takes one "on his soul's salvation." Sorry, but that was just an actress reading a Thematically Important (and bad) Line, and Nicholson's face saying the obvious Meaningful Universe thing: "Look lady, you've had a tough break and I sympathize, but get a life..." even though it would seem that given future developments The Pledge meant something more to him... I wanted the scene with the eagle-eyed psychologist (Helen Mirren) to last longer, and to be shot in a simple Meaningful Universe long shot without all the fancy audio distortions and flashbacks. Granted, the obsessed cop had his reasons for tuning her out, but I think that if we had been allowed to see just the expression on her face by the end of their little chat, we would have known some things that the movie never tells us- like maybe the cop's interest in little girls, dead or alive, was a bit unwholesome?
As for the cop, already known as a nutcase, getting all those other cops to go along with his outrageous scheme involving his lover's daughter, now we're in Parallel Universe territory.
THE PLEDGE is right up there with THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD as far as distractingly unnecessary starpower goes. (Though at least here, they're all just fine, Miss Redgrave, Stanton, Rourke, and all.) Robin Wright is great as the cop's troubled waitress lover, but the director seems to have broken with form and spotlit her in the kinds of conventional emotional states at which a little gold man nods...
As for the cop, already known as a nutcase, getting all those other cops to go along with his outrageous scheme involving his lover's daughter, now we're in Parallel Universe territory.
THE PLEDGE is right up there with THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD as far as distractingly unnecessary starpower goes. (Though at least here, they're all just fine, Miss Redgrave, Stanton, Rourke, and all.) Robin Wright is great as the cop's troubled waitress lover, but the director seems to have broken with form and spotlit her in the kinds of conventional emotional states at which a little gold man nods...