Review of The Pledge (2001) by Lanning : — 04 Dec 2007
Holy smokes, what an amazing cast! Besides Nicholson, we've got Robin Wright Penn -- Alas, poor Buttercup, thou art neither very buttery nor even very cuppy in this excruciating outing, undoubtedly adding further empirical credence to the notion that spouses should beware of working together --, Patricia Clarkson, Helen Mirren, Eileen Ryan, Vanessa Redgrave, Benicio Del Torro, Harry Dean Stanton, Sam Shepard, and Mickey Rourke -- who's amazing here.
He does a great job. I'll stick my neck out and say that Rourke is the one great performance here. Two stars for him. Parenthetically, (the main young woman in this movie would do well to stick to her day job, perhaps encouraging the likes of Dakota Fanning to join her in the noble pursuit of pool hustling or inventing new Slurpee combinations at the local 7-Eleven or such like.
) So, ah, what the heck happened? Wowsers. How on earth do you put together a group of actors like this and then come up with this movie? Well, flixster family, I think this question is indeed an excellent one.
On the plus side, somewhere, someone decided the story was top drawer. Good. And all these actors bought into the screen play. Also good. The baseline idea, I think, is solid. But between the original script and the execution, uh, well, a very very very sad thing happened.
How on earth, with a talent laden crew like this, could you possibly bomb? Answer: Behold the final product! I think somebody really screwed up. Royally. Who? I have absolutely no idea. (Sean Penn?).
This review of The Pledge (2001) was written by Lanning : on 04 Dec 2007.
The Pledge has generally received positive reviews.
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