Now Playing
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

sort by name

sort by score

38 12 Rounds
48 17 Again
76 Adventureland
48 Angels & Demons
54 Battle for Terra
xx Bruno
80 Coraline
40 Dance Flick
83 Drag Me to Hell
72 Earth
45 Fast & Furious
61 Fighting
34 Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
72 Gran Torino
73 Hangover, The
47 Hannah Montana: The Movie
51 Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
54 Imagine That
41 Knowing
32 Land of the Lost
56 Monsters vs. Aliens
34 My Life in Ruins
51 My Sister's Keeper
46 Next Day Air
42 Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
54 Observe and Report
25 Obsessed
48 Proposal, The
70 Public Enemies
61 Soloist, The
83 Star Trek
64 State of Play
55 Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, The
52 Terminator Salvation
35 Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
77 Under the Sea 3D
88 Up
43 X-Men Origins: Wolverine
34 Year One

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

sort by name

sort by score

67 $9.99
75 24 City
66 Adoration
74 Afghan Star
48 Alien Trespass
56 American Violet
82 Anvil! The Story of Anvil
57 Away We Go
81 Beaches of Agnes, The
62 Big Man Japan
28 Big Shot-Caller, The
78 Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
55 Brothers Bloom, The
82 Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
xx Call of the Wild
63 Cheri
62 Cherry Blossoms
63 Dead Snow
65 Departures
18 Downloading Nancy
58 Easy Virtue
70 End of the Line, The
77 Every Little Step
64 Examined Life
80 Food, Inc.
38 Gigantic
56 Girl from Monaco, The
67 Girlfriend Experience, The
87 Gomorrah
89 Goodbye Solo
63 Great Buck Howard, The
79 Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
xx Home
82 Hunger
91 Hurt Locker, The
16 I Hate Valentine's Day
81 Il Divo
54 Is Anybody There?
71 Jerichow
58 Julia
74 Lemon Tree
36 Life is Hot in Cracktown
40 Limits of Control, The
42 Little Ashes
64 Lymelife
50 Management
57 Merry Gentleman, The
66 Moon
35 New York
62 Not Forgotten
xx Offshore
78 O'Horten
64 Outrage
40 Paris 36
54 Pontypool
71 Pressure Cooker
52 Quiet Chaos
83 Revanche
67 Rudo y Cursi
86 Seraphine
65 Sex Positive
70 Shall We Kiss?
77 Sin Nombre
59 Sleep Dealer
74 Song of Sparrows, The
54 Stoning of Soraya M., The
82 Sugar
84 Summer Hours
61 Sunshine Cleaning
28 Surveillance
42 Tennessee
63 Tetro
64 Throw Down Your Heart
80 Tokyo Sonata
63 Tokyo!
70 Tony Manero
74 Treeless Mountain
88 Tulpan
74 Two Lovers
83 Tyson
83 U2 3D
60 Under Our Skin
69 Unmistaken Child
69 Valentino: The Last Emperor
22 What Goes Up
45 Whatever Works
57 Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Pledge, The
Warner Bros.


5.7

based on 33 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 18 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for strong violence and language

Starring Jack Nicholson, Robin Wright Penn, Aaron Eckhart, Benicio Del Toro, Helen Mirren, Sam Shepard, Vanessa Redgrave, Patricia Clarkson, and Mickey Rourke

Academy Award-winner Jack Nicholson stars as Jerry Black, a Nevada homicide detective who volunteers for one final investigation on the eve of his retirement. He offers his expertise at a compromised crime scene and ends up making a promise to the young victim's mother that will change his life forever. (Warner Brothers)

GENRE(S):	Drama
WRITTEN BY:	Jerzy Kromolowski Mary Olson-Kromolowski Friedrich Dürrenmatt (book)
DIRECTED BY:	Sean Penn
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: June 19, 2001 Theatrical: January 19, 2001
RUNNING TIME:	123 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan

One of the most aggressively ambiguous pictures of the year. There is a certain power to that.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Not a film for all tastes, but it's a considerable artistic achievement.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Penn and Nicholson take risks with the material and elevate the movie to another, unanticipated, haunting level.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Why on earth didn't Warner Bros. release this movie in time for Oscar consideration? Sure, it's bleak, depressing, sometimes painful to watch. But it would have been one of the best pictures of the year, and Nicholson (who hasn't done work of this caliber since "The Crossing Guard") might have been on the podium again.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

In its dark, relentless, devastatingly ironic way, The Pledge is an exhilarating movie, partly because it isn't afraid to be genuinely challenging.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Nicholson is outstanding as he gradually but tellingly sketches in aspects of a man driven by a mission that outstrips his instincts as a professional lawman.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

If Penn really lets these actors sing, his watchful camera also knows how to respect their silences.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Not a pleasant film, but it is deeply, scarily rewarding.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

It's not hard to see why actors love working with Penn, even in the smallest roles; he lets them speak monologues even when they're saying nothing at all.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

In crafting a fierce, fragmented, downbeat film about a character who makes the wrong decision as a man by being right as a cop, Penn flies in the face of what sells in Hollywood. Godspeed.

LA Weekly F. X. Feeney

Penn's own gifts as an actor seem, in turn, to bring out the best in Nicholson, as well as the rest of the cast.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

It is understatement to say that Nicholson does some of the finest work of his career here, easily equaling "The Shining" for gargoyle monstrousness and "As Good as It Gets" for tortured humanism.

USA Today Mike Clark

The movie wouldn't be imaginable without its commanding star. Nicholson is in virtually every scene underplaying to great effect

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Jack Nicholson in a performance that ranks among his best, yet leaves you feeling unfulfilled as never before.

Mr. Showbiz Larry Terenzi

Works best as a mood piece — the mood, however, is grim.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Penn is a true talent, but there's just enough languid pretension to The Pledge to make you wonder if he's ultimately more interested in parading his promise as a director than in fulfilling it.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A rare thriller - and a rare American film - that centers on both dramatic and moral issues, crises of conscience. And thanks to a superb central performance by Nicholson as detective Black, it's a film that compels, thrills and ends up coming very close to tragedy.

San Francisco Chronicle Bob Graham

Sets off depth charges of the psyche.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

The acting is excellent and Penn reconfirms his remarkable talent for muted, understated filmmaking that focuses on character and dialogue rather than spectacle and sensationalism.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Nicholson is terrific here, in a role that demands he act, rather than just be Jack.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

A nervy as well as somber piece of work, not only for the way it confounds and even frustrates certain genre expectations, but also -- and especially -- for the way it confronts the viewer with the moral implications of that frustration.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

Though at times it threatens to meander off, Penn's movie fulfills its destiny as an alienated fable of justice and luck, personified by Jack in the twilight of his iconicity, babbling to himself at the crossroads of nowhere.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Short on action but heavy on ambiance, and the cumulative effect packs a whopper if you're willing to stop and think about it. Penn, never one to opt for action over thought, clearly expects that his audience will.

Slate David Edelstein

Fitfully haunting and impressive: a little less loitery and opaque and it might have been a classic.

Film.com Robert Horton

Sometimes feels like an acting class gone berserk, with Penn indulging his high-powered cast

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

It's unspeakably morbid, and never adds up to be something special.

TNT RoughCut Susannah Breslin

Luckily, Penn's attentive directing and Nicholson's layered acting render The Pledge's occasionally questionable story permutations secondary to enjoying this emotionally powerful film of rare and grave subtlety.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

The solemn, morose tone of The Pledge also guarantees a quick box office death: This is essentially a movie about bad things happening to good people, and if you have any interest in seeing this beautifully made bummer, don't wait too long.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

Cares not a whit for such arbitrary concepts as justice, crime or punishment. It understands the relativism of right and wrong and takes a kind of perverse pleasure in reminding us that there are some things we'll never know.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

A forced march toward certain disaster, a scenario only passionate believers in predestination are likely to savor.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

The problem isn't a lack of substance, and certainly not a dearth of talent, but a shortage of fun.

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

A surprisingly uneven and perhaps even mediocre character drama.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

Just a bad movie, with more bits of good acting and flashes of director's invention than you get in most bad movies.

The average user rating for this movie is 5.7 (out of 10) based on 18 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Pat C. gave it a 6:
Starts off taking us into unexplored territory, but then wanders off into its own authenticity.

Aaron S. gave it a 5:
Was going great until the heinous ending, which totally "f"-ed up an otherwise brilliant picture. Terrific acting.

Fernando gave it an 8:
Good movie. Well directed, great preformance from Our Jack. Hi chance you'll hate it tho cos it's so damn slow. Snails on valium crawling through treacle move faster. But this doesn't make it a bad movie, just one with negligible mass appeal. You are not the yardstick. You are not definitive You are one person among six billion. Taste is relative; quality is absolute. Remember that.

John W. gave it a 3:
Too slowly paced; disturbing on any number of levels; an endless cycle of disassociated "suspense-building" scenes which, like clockwork, culminate either in exactly what you expect or exactly what you don't expect. At the end you're just guessing "heads or tails" as to what will happen, with the outcomes incapable of being predicted but instead left merely to the whim of the directing/writing crew. Good acting, sure, but that's about it.

AJ M. gave it a 10:
The Pledge is with out a doubt one of Nicholson's finest....This film will bring great recognition to Penn's directorial talents....A must see!!!!!

Dennis M. gave it a 6:
Long. Liked the ending.

Fried O. gave it an 8:
Clearly not a film that the average couch-potato will understand. Touches upon the deeply spiritual questions of self-trust, duty, love, and "what evil lurks in the heart of mankind." Beautifully filmed and acted. What more can you ask for?

Pledge, The Warner Bros.

Pledge, The
Warner Bros.