The Pledge

Never have I seen such argument over a movie! Some hate The Pledge, some love it; some say the ending is brilliant, others says it sucks; some can't figure out who the killer was or why the ex-cop is so obsessed and unstable. The Pledge is not your traditional serial killer movie. I don't like most of them because they exploit victims and glorify serial killers. However, this is one movie made on this topic that I will actually recommend. If you haven't seen the movie and don't want to ruin the suspense, stop here. For those who have seen it or those who don't plan to, read on.

The movie opens with the retirement party of homicide detective, Jerry Black, played by Jack Nicholson. One can see he isn't all that keen on being forced out to pasture and, in the last six hours of his employment, he leaves his own party to view the crime scene of a murdered child. The crime seems simple enough to solve. A young girl has been raped and murdered. A boy from the neighborhood sees a crazed Native American man running from the scene. He is quickly picked up by the police. He confesses, then grabs a policeman's gun and kills himself. He has a criminal record including rape. He has chocolate wrappers in his car and the victim has chocolate in her stomach. Sure looks like a winner. However, Jerry isn't comfortable with the conclusion. The rape in the man's criminal record is actually statutory rape. The confession appears pressured and the suspect has a very low IQ. What we may have here is a loser who stumbled across the crime scene and confessed to please the policeman. He gave no details of the crime itself. It is possible any number of lowlifes in the town could have had similar backgrounds that would have made them look suspicious. So, Jerry is bugged by the case being closed. But, heck, the suspect is dead, let's move on. Everyone is happy, no one is complaining, so stop rocking the boat, Jerry. Get a life.

Jerry meanwhile has made a pledge to the family to find the killer. And though we never see the family complain about the handling of the case, Jerry continues to search for the killer he thinks is still out there. At this point, we can reason that the pledge he made is more to himself than the family; perhaps, a test of what he is made of. He still KNOWS something just isn't right. KNOWING is a terrible burden. So, he sets out to find the truth and get the real killer off the street. He buys a gas station near a nice fishing lake that happens to be on the main road between a trio of little dead girls. Here we have a bit of overkill on the signature in these crimes. All girls under twelve, all blonde, and killed in the same way, and all wearing red at the time of death. This is probably too simplistic. But if these WERE the facts, I sure would be looking for connections in these crimes if they all happened in the same area. However, the cops say, "So, what? If you are going to kill a kid, the chances of her being blonde (in that area of the country) and wearing red are not that big a deal." Well, I half agree with them. Too often too much is made of similarities that have a high probability of just being coincidence. On the other hand, that many dead girls in a small area should warrant serious consideration that a serial killer may be at work, with or without the obvious matching characteristics.

So, Jerry waits and watches. He meets a lady and her young blonde daughter and you just KNOW this kid is going to be a target. But, Jerry actually starts becoming happy. He falls in love with the woman and her daughter and they fall in love with him. They become a loving family. Irony is the one of the main chords playing in this film. Jerry goes to find a killer and instead he finds love - the last thing he expected. But, then, just as he finds a life worth living, his original purpose comes back to haunt him. A weird religious man stops to chat up his new girlfriend's daughter. He is very creepy and his house has porcupines made from brushes in it. The little girl that the dead suspect supposedly killed had told her friend that a big man she called Wizard gave her porcupines. Jerry gets home one day and his girlfriend say the weird religious man took her daughter off to his church. Jerry panics and drives through fields and bursts into the church. He sees the little girl bloody and dead up on the altar. Then the sight vanishes and he realizes it is just a church service. Nothing is amiss. Is Jerry cracking up? Or is Jerry just living in tremendous fear from what he knows? Is the killer actually this big religious man or is he just a kind of nice weirdo? Is this just another set of coincidences that have convinced him of the man's guilt in quite the same manner that the Native American man's circumstances convinced the investigator in charge of the case of HIS guilt? Is he rushing to judgment in the same careless manner?

Jerry manages to hang on and get himself back to normal functioning. But then the little girl tells him that "The Wizard" has been meeting her and that he gave her porcupine candies and tomorrow she is going to a secret place to meet him. Now, Jerry KNOWS that THIS will be the killer and he will murder her. She is, after all, not supposed to tell anyone and will simply be found dead. Jerry is in a horrible dilemma. He could just forbid her to go and then any other day she could end up dead. Or he could use this opportunity to save her life and stop a killer from ever killing again. Does he consider that he may have a hidden agenda and that catching this killer is more important to him than anything else in the world? Even the little girl? Is he risking sacrificing her for a greater cause or perhaps just for his own sanity? Jerry undoubtedly cannot discern what exactly IS his own motive or is it just that life causes us to be caught in situations where more than one motive overlap and there is little we can do to disentangle them.

Jerry is so sure of catching the killer that he calls in the cops (his old buds) and sets up the sting. They wait in the bushes while the little girl plays and waits for the porcupine man. He never shows up. The operation folds and the mother of the child finds out that Jerry used her daughter to catch a killer "that is in his mind only". She feels horribly deceived and standing at the site confronting him, Jerry has no answer for her; no answer for himself. He loses his mind at that point. He loses his sense of knowing, his sense of logic, and his sense of reality. He believed in a reality that no one but he accepted and now he is not so sure of that reality himself. And he has lost his new family -his one chance left at love and happiness - and he no longer knows if he WAS just crazy or not. At that, he can no longer handle the world and goes off the deep end.

The ending so many fail to understand in this movie is what did it mean in the plot that the killer didn't show and why did it drive Jerry so nuts. The killer WAS on his way but was in a car accident en route. He died in the accident. Here is part of the irony. But for that unfortunate second of fate, the killer would have arrived and been caught, Jerry would have been vindicated, and the girlfriend would have thanked him for saving her little girl's life instead of hating him. He would have been a hero. Instead, he is a fool.

Victims, heroes, fools…. they all exist because of one moment of fate. We get lucky…or we don't. We are made and broken by events we do not control. This irony is often unseen by people who do not wish to accept the unsettling thought that so much of life is outside our control. Fame and infamy, fortune or failure, success or crushing defeat…who controls these? There but for the grace of God (or luck) go I.

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Pat Brown
The Sexual Homicide Exchange

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