The Pledge

Detective Jerry Black, days from retirement, makes a promise to the mother of a murdered girl: he will find the real killer. A Native American man with intellectual disabilities has been coerced into confessing and the case is closed. Black refuses the closure. Sean Penn directed, from the 1958 novella by the Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt. Jerzy Kromolowski and Mary Olson-Kromolowski wrote the screenplay. Jack Nicholson stars, with Patricia Clarkson, Helen Mirren and Benicio del Toro in the cast. Black buys a gas station and builds his life around the investigation. He goes as far as using a local girl as bait in a sting, and the operation ends in disaster. Filming took place mostly in British Columbia. The reviews were positive: Rotten Tomatoes 78 percent, Metacritic 71. Roger Ebert raised his assessment in 2012 and added it to his Great Movies list. Audiences said the opposite; the CinemaScore was a D. On a 37 million dollar budget it grossed 29.4 million worldwide. Who it is for: viewers who like noir and procedurals that end unresolved. Who it is not for: anyone who needs a detective story to pay off. The whole point is that the solution never arrives, and that D grade is the response to it.