Sean Penn directs Jack Nicholson in The Pledge

Few actors of his generation have received the acclaim accorded Sean Penn. But acclaimed or not, what he really wants to do is direct. Penn's first film, The Indian Runner, showed a real cinematic flair that spoke well for his auteur ambitions. Unfortunately, Penn also wanted to write, and his screenplay for his next film, The Crossing Guard with Jack Nicholson, sabotaged what might have been a worthy successor. This time he has left the writing to others and justifies Nicholson's faith in him.

The Pledge starts off looking like it's going to be a festival of cliches. Nicholson is Jerry Black, an aging Nevada cop reluctantly stepping down but with nowhere to step to. His retirement party is interrupted by a report concerning the grisly murder of a 14-year old girl. Black, who sees nothing to celebrate anyway, tags along to the crime scene. When his less experienced colleagues balk at bringing the bad news to the girl's mother, he volunteers for the assignment.

Holding a cross made by her daughter, the girl's mother asks Black to swear on his "soul's salvation" that he'll find the killer. He accepts the challenge, but the way the scene is played it's hard to believe the mother's words haunt him enough to dominate his life. When the police arrest a mentally retarded Indian for the crime, they consider the case closed after the suspect commits suicide, but Black is not satisfied. He continues the investigation on his own, even going so far as to buy a rundown gas station because it's where the killer's car is believed to have made a stop.

By this time, it becomes clear that the scene between Black and the victim's mother was right on target. Black is not driven by his promise to the mother, but by his own private demons. A lifelong bachelor, his job was his life. The suspects he interrogates, the witnesses he interviews, his fellow police officers--they are his only community. Without his job, he is a man adrift. Scenes of Black fishing alone surrounded by nature's beauty never suggest the tranquility such scenes usually evoke, only isolation and despair. When he takes up with a waitress played by Robin Wright, the relationship only fuels his obsession because Black sees the woman's daughter as bait to lure the killer.

As we watch Black futilely try to hang onto his former life, we are also watching Jack Nicholson return to the kind of role worthy of his talent. After a decade in which the three time Oscar winner spent his time in high profile product requiring little more than his "Jack" persona, Nicholson is an actor again, not an icon. In Jerry Black, you can even hear faint echoes of his earlier roles: the restless Bobby Dupea of Five Easy Pieces, the disillusioned brother of King of Marvin Gardens, and even a touch of J.J. Gittes, the private eye whose morality was no match for the corruption in Chinatown.

We are also watching Sean Penn come into his own as a director. With a talented crew behind him, he fulfills the promise he showed in The Indian Runner. This is a man who may have even studied silent films when preparing to direct because he uses silence beautifully, especially in the memorable scene in which Black tells the victim's mother of her daughter's fate. Not a word is spoken between them, yet the scene has more impact than a dozen car crashes from a dozen lesser films.

Penn also surrounds his star with a first rate cast. Vanessa Redgrave, Robin Wright, and Sam Sheperd, among others, all provide excellent support. Penn even gives Mickey Rourke an opportunity to rehabilitate himself, which he does in an affecting cameo as the murdered girl's father.

The Pledge is being sold as another serial killer thriller. That may be the bait to lure you into the theater, but it's Jerry Black's torment that will stay with you when the lights are turned on.

Brian W. Fairbanks

Originally published at Paris Woman Journal
© 2001 Brian W. Fairbanks



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Sin City: Film noir on steroids

When people talk about moral ambivalence in the movies, they’re often talking about film noir, a genre (subgenre, actually) that flourished in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s. A paranoid, morally perverse world of terse talking tough guys and tougher women (more often called "dames"), film noir elevated pickpockets and prostitutes to hero status (Pickup on South Street) while corruption flourished in the highest, most pristine places. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, the streets were dark and rainy, and the shadows never as black as the protagonists’ souls.

The inhabitants of Sin City are dark souls, indeed, and the corruption reaches very high, into government and even the church. Its "heroes" are a scraggly lot. Most of them are good guys only because the bad guys are so much worse.

But the stories (there are several) and the characters (enough to leave you a little confused) are less important to Sin City than style. Based on Frank Miller’s "graphic novels" which had their roots in film noir, Robert Rodriguez’s film (with a brief sequence directed by Quentin Tarantino) is a visual knockout, a nightmare that might have been inspired by too many viewings of Night and the City or Dark Passage. Some of the best noirs are so intense in emotion and visual style that they are perfect for comic book treatment, and Sin City inventively rings true to Miller's comics and the movies that inspired them.

Filmed in black-and-white with occasional splashes of color, Sin City is set in a bottomless pit of corruption called Basin City where the prostitutes have a deal with the cops, most of whom are as crooked as the road to Hell. The characters are mainly archetypes. There’s Bruce Willis as Hartigan, the good cop whose bum ticker doesn’t prevent him from gallantly rescuing a girl held hostage by a sadistic pederast, a sleazeball given free rein by the police because he’s the son of a corrupt politician (Powers Boothe) whose brother, a psychotic cardinal (Rutger Hauer), holds the real power. There’s a photojournalist (Clive Owen) at war with a dirty cop (Benicio Del Toro) for the affections of a waitress, heroic hookers (led by Rosario Dawson), and a grotesque thug named Marv who’s out to avenge the death of a hooker because he’s grateful she shared the sheets with someone so unattractive.

As Marv, Mickey Rourke is made up to look like a more menacing double for the young Jack Palance (who appeared in a number of noirs, including Panic in the Streets). At other times, he brings to mind Kirk Douglas, but only after the dimple-chinned icon's encounter with a sadistic plastic surgeon. Marv’s story takes up the most time, or seems to because it’s the most satisfying. A powerful, seemingly indestructible brute with a heart, if not of gold, than at least gold-plating, Marv speaks in dialogue that would make Mickey Spillane proud.

"It’s a lousy room in a lousy part of a lousy town," he moans as he sits smoking cigarettes on the edge of the bed where his night of bliss took place. After he’s framed for murder, he explains his strategy for revenge: "This is blood for blood and by the gallons. This is the old days, the bad days, the all or nothing days. They’re back."

In Sin City, the bad days are back, indeed, and gloriously so. Like L.A. Confidential on steroids with a hit of LSD thrown in, it’s a bloody, violent, misogynistic movie that's not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach, and if you can't leave your political correctness at the door, don’t enter. The violence is more reminiscent of a Road Runner cartoon than anything from the pages of Raymond Chandler, but it’s more intense, and often extreme. There are castrations, cannibalism, dismemberments, and buckets and buckets of blood. But though it pays homage to film noir, it’s still a comic book that throws reality out the window like one of Bogart’s cigarette butts. Characters engage in heroics that might even make Batman shy away, and bullets are not nearly as lethal as they tend to be in life.

Filmed almost entirely against computer generated backdrops, Sin City is an original, one of a kind movie with an almost Twilight Zone feel. It’s as if Miller left his drawing board to take a nap, and his characters took on a more vivid life while he slept. Sin City is like an hallucination in which dozens of film noirs are stuffed in a blender, and the best parts spill out in exaggerated fashion. You’ll love it or hate it, but you won’t forget it, not this year, anyway.

Brian W. Fairbanks

Originally published at Paris Woman Journal

© 2005 Brian W. Fairbanks


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