Jack Smith movie reviews:            Date 01-22-2001

The Pledge

But, this last weekend two movies all of a sudden popped up again and I first looked at the title and said, “Gee, would any of those be interesting to go to see.” And the name of the first movie, was a Jack Nicholson film, it’s the first film he’s done in about a year and a half or two years, since he got the academy award. He’s just been enjoying retirement. And somebody said, “Oh, this must be a good film he came out of retirement, so to speak, to do it.” It’s called “The Pledge.” What is a pledge? A contract, a pledge. I’m going, “Huh, that might be interesting, I wonder if Hollywood’s trying to tell us about the commercial procedure.” I looked farther down the page and there’s another movie out, it’s called “The Gift.” I’m goin’ “huh, double witness in the same week?” We got a movie called “The Gift” and a movie called “The Pledge” what’s the difference? A gift conveys title immediately from the giver to the recipient, so that the giver no longer has any title whatsoever in the property by way of the contract. But in the gift, usually the gift is conveyed at the same time. [In] other words the giving of the article or the thing is done at the time of the agreement. Whereas in a pledge, there is a contract there, whereby title passes to the party that is to receive it. But usually the thing itself remains in the hands or in the possession of the giver until sometime later down the road. However legal title already has transferred. So the “pledger”, if he hasn’t transferred the item, is in debt to the “pledgee”. If you go see those movies you will find out that yes, there are commercial connotations involved in ‘em. You will find out that the giver of the gift is a woman and the pledger in the pledge is a man. And you will see that they’re both in the nature of a “Christ” because they both now are debtors in the service of some other party. Not for their own benefit perse’ but for the benefit of those to whom they have conveyed the pledge and the gift.

In “The Pledge”, our hero is a retiring policeman who investigates murders. He’s a detective that solves murders. He works for the police force in Reno, Nevada. And on the day that they’re giving him the retirement party, it’s his last day at work he’s going to go fishing now, a little girl age I believe eight is discovered up in the mountains, in the woods, in the snow, brutally murdered, raped, murdered, cut-up. And as the call comes in to the detectives, during the middle of his retirement party in the afternoon, a retiring policeman is not all that much into parties he’s more into his job, he’s very dedicated.

And when the other detectives get the call he says, “Ahh, I may as well tag along with you.”

They said, “Why? You’re retiring, you’re outa here by the end of the day, two more hours.”

He said, “Eh nothin’ else to do, I’ll come along with you if you want an old goat, Maybe I can give you some assistance. He goes out to the scene. When they get out to the scene there is the sheriff’s department, there’s the local police and then they called in the police from Reno because they had enough of a detective thing to deal with homicide.

And everybody says, “Have you notified the little girl’s parents?”

And the police says, “No.” And the sheriff’s say, “No, no, I guess we got somebody who’ll do it. But we don’t really want to do it, we don’t want to have to go over and face them.” So Jack Nicholson goes over to tell the parents. The parents run a turkey farm. And he informs them of the death of their daughter and then he’s nice enough to go into the house and sit down with them and stay with them for a little period of time. And he starts asking ‘em some questions but not as a policeman more as a friend.

And the mother finally says to him, “You’re gonna get this guy aren’t you?”

And he says, “Well, you don’t understand, I’m retiring. But yea, they’re gonna get him.”

And she says, “Pledge to me on the salvation of your soul that you will get this man.”

And he finally does. And so when he leaves there, he’s given this lady a pledge, it turns out that everybody thinks that the crime is an absolute slam-dunk. There was a boy witness that had been on the scene, in his snowmobile and he saw this Indian running through the snow really upset, get into a pickup truck, drive off. He’s given the cops the description of the Indian and the pickup truck and they put an all-points bulletin out for it. And when the boy later went in the direction that the Indian had been, he discovered the body of the girl and so he reported it. So the cops think the Indian has done it. All signs indicate he may have done it. There’s circumstantial evidence to suggest that he did it. But what ends up happening is after events transpire, Jack Nicholson does some investigation after he’s retired, because there’s a couple of pieces of the evidence that don’t make sense. And he decides there is a very large probability that the Indian was not the right guy. But now the Indian’s dead. Just like in so many political assassinations. And everybody is willing to put this to rest and just blame the Indian and go on with their life. It’s a nice pretty package, we’ve got a bad guy, he was at the scenes, we’ve got witnesses, events have transpired, it appears as though why waste anyone’s time? Let me ask you a question, how many people in America know what a pledge is?

[someone else] (unintelligible)

I didn’t ask what the definition of a pledge was. I asked you to answer the question, “How many people in America do you think understand or know what a pledge is?” If they took a pledge, how many of them would understand what it requires that they need to do? Now, just about everybody pledges allegiance to the flag, of the United States of America for which it stands, one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. They don’t even understand that they’re pledging allegedly to a republic and they’re not following a republic How many people that stand up and take that pledge are in violation of that pledge? Everyone of em. Would it be refreshing to see a story where when somebody takes a pledge, his whole life is dedicated to that pledge and it means something? Because that’s the story you’re seeing. And when he dedicates his life to carrying out his pledge everybody around him without exceptions think number one, he’s a lunatic and number two, either lose faith in him, if they had it, or stop supporting him at one stage or another of the game. Because nobody understands pledge and nobody at all is out there taking it seriously.

Hollywood has got a sense of morality, in some of these films, not by what you’re seeing in the content on the surface. But what they’re showing you and telling you is going on behind the scene. I’m sure that there’s probably not more than a tenth of one percent of the people, if that, that are going to like the outcome of this movie. This movie was directed by Sean Penn, who just exactly doesn’t do all of the commercially nice things a lot of people want. Actually the story was written by two [or three actors including] or three people including Billy Bob Thornton, which isn’t exactly the mainstream when it comes to a lot of neat package soap opera stories that people like to see happy endings on. But it’s very correct and it’s got a point to make. But not many people leaving the theater are gonna understand the point that this thing is making.

As transcribed by: Majic