The Pledge Reviews
EricDSnider.com
The dreary film makes promises it doesn't deliver on, pulling the rug out from under us without really letting us step on it in the first place.
Full Review
| Original Score: C+
SPLICEDWire
There's very little compelling, or even memorable, about it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Flick Filosopher
Thoughtlessness is no excuse ... for so revolting a film that The Pledge ultimately is. I couldn't wait to get out of the theater just to get the stink of it off me.
Movie Metropolis
...a resolutely low-key and solidly unconventional exercise in frustration.
| Original Score: 6/10
Top CriticIt has all the right credentials, so why is it such a muddled mess?
BBC
As enthralling as it sometimes is, there isn't any point to the relentless grimness.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
San Diego Metropolitan
The problem is Nicholson. He sleepwalks through the part in a cloud of ubiquitous cigarette smoke, stiff, uncomfortable, and looking like he wishes he'd never signed that contract.
CinemaSense.Com
We left with a feeling of lethargy that made watching The Pledge hardly worth the effort.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
JoBlo's Movie Emporium
Other than re-iterating the well-known fact that 'life sucks,' I didn't really get much out of this movie.
Full Review
| Original Score: 6/10
Laramie Movie Scope
The film is more exciting that watching paint dry, however, because of great work by some very talented actors.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Talking Pictures (U.S.)
The story falls into the trap of using too many twists, red herrings and coincidences.
culturevulture.net
So logy and doom-laden that watching it feels like a hike through waist-deep snow.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/10
Drags us through dark places, without convincing us it's a journey worth taking.
Full Review
| Original Score: C-
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Great acting doesn't compensate for weak writing.
Penn's unending parade of unhappy situations is simply too insistent, his suffocating, claustrophobic worldview more of an assault than the revelation he perhaps hopes it will be.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
PopMatters
While it's never uninteresting, and its story moves sinuously, quite deft and engaging ... it eventually becomes overbearing.
Hollywood Report Card
Moving with the speed of a paddle-boat upstream, the bulk of the movie is about as exciting as watching someone fish.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/10
