The Pledge
Directed by: Sean Penn
Written by: Friedrick Durrenmatt, Jerry Kromolowski, Mary Olson
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Benicio Del Toro, Robin Wright Penn

This movie is probably not what you think it is. On the surface, it seems like a fairly typical serial killer type movie. Jack Nicholson plays the role of Jerry Black, a detective who is on his last day of work before retiring from the police force. While at his own retirement party, he hears about a case that he finds compelling. Of course, he becomes obsessed, and cannot rest until he solves this one last case. Now, how many times have we heard that scenario before?

I certainly had my doubts from the outset. The whole thing just seemed too cliched to be enjoyable.The Pledge however, manages to be anything but predictable. In the final analysis, I have to say that this is both a good and bad thing.

The case that Jerry takes on is one in which a little girl has been mutilated and killed, but the movie focuses on the detective himself, rather than the killer or the process of finding the killer.Jerry grapples with his sanity as he becomes obsessed with this case - and we all know that there is no one better to walk that line between sanity and insanity than Jack Nicholson.

One interesting thing is that most of the characters in the movie are played by seemingly average people. There are no beautiful supermodels in this movie. Jack Nicholson’s love interest in the movie, played by Robin Wright Penn (Sean Penn’s wife), is definitely not made up to look like a bombshell. This gives the film a realistic feel.

Benicio Del Toro was the only other big name actor in the film that was immediately recognizable to me. (Man, how many movies has this guy been in this year?) Del Toro plays a creepy mentally handicapped indian who was convicted in the past for killing a young girl. For the most part he does a good job of playing what seems to be an odd role for him, but there were points when I thought he was overdoing it a little. Again, however, the movie does not spend much time with Del Toro’s character, and the focus comes squarely back to Detective Jerry Black.

The cinematography was really cool, with a lot of interesting shots and camera angles. I remember one shot in particular that I really liked was an overhead shot of Jack Nicholson’s character as walks through a doorway as he is leaving a store. There is also some really cool settings, such as the scene where Jerry must tell the parents of the girl that she has been murdered. The parents on a farm, and Jerry wades through a seemingly endless field of turkeys in order to talk with them.

The movie definitely has an artsy feel.I am not too familiar with Sean Penn’s other work, but it is evident that this is his style. He likes to take things slowly, and he likes to give the camera time to quietly scrutinize the characters and their surroundings.

This is all fine and dandy, but I think that in some ways people are giving Sean Penn a little too much credit. I mean, at what point does a movie stop being artistic and start being just plain boring? I have to say that at points the movie was too slow and was stretched out longer than it needed to be. When a movie is slow moving and reflective that’s one thing, but it seemed like this movie was slow moving without a purpose.

There are long stretches where we sit and watch and wait for something significant to happen only to be thwarted again and again by false alarms. This, combined with the general slowness, frustrated me at times as a viewer. In a way, I think Penn is trying to convey the frustration of Jack’s character, and also his slow spiral into insanity, but personally I just felt like it was just a little too slow.

The ending of the movie is rather interesting, and I will not give any of it away. I will say that it is something I did not expect, and this in itself is a good thing. Still, the ending felt somewhat unsatisfying, and I felt a twinge of desire for a tiny bit of predictability just to wrap things up. It made me feel like I invested a lot of time in the movie for nothing.

When it comes down to it, The Pledge is a really nice-looking film, and it has some really cool elements to it. On the other hand, it just didn’t really turn my crank. Some people will love it, some people will hate it, but I am sitting somewhere in the middle on this one. — Sean

A Better Tomorrow 2 (DVD)
Directed by: John Woo
Written by: Hark Tsui, John Woo
Starring: Chow Yun Fat

Now that John Woo has really made an impression on mainstream North American audiences with Mission Impossible 2 (among others), his older work is becoming increasingly easier to find for home video consumption. Not that I have really been going out of my way to track down any of his movies, but they just seem to be popping up in convenient locations. (ie. my local video stores)

A Better Tomorrow II is actually a movie that came out back in 1987, and it has just recently been released on DVD. As luck would have it, this DVD found its way to the new release shelves of a local video store, and something about it just beckoned to me. I just happened to be in the mood for a melodramatic bad ass action flick, and since this one was directed by John Woo and starred Chow Yun Fat, I had a hunch it would be worthwhile.

Now granted, I was a little worried about renting a sequel without having ever seen its predecessor, but I knew that most Hong Kong action flicks were not usually praised for their in depth storylines, so I figured I wouldn’t be missing any important information Plus, it wasn’t like I had a choice, because A Better Tomorrow wasn’t due to be released on DVD until a few weeks later.As it turns out, I did find the story to be a little confusing at times, but I don’t think seeing the first movie would have really cleared up any of the questions I had.

As the movie starts, we meet a businessman named Lung, who is suspected to be heading up a number of illegal operations. The police convince a couple of ex-cons to go undercover for them to try and get the skinny on Lung. Strangely enough, we soon find out that Lung has actually been trying to go straight for years, but he has found that it’s harder to get out of the business than one might think. It seems there’s always someone out to get him! After an “incident” (involving a lot of slow motion… obviously), he is forced to flee to New York City, where he can hide out and be safe from would be assassins. The problem is, once he is in NYC, he only ends up endangering the family that he has there. When his brother and his niece both get killed by bullets that were meant for him, Lung basically goes off the deep end. He goes loopy, and becomes a complete vegetable.

This is where Chow Yun Fat’s character comes into the picture. He is also a relative of Lung’s (everyone seems to be related to everyone else in this movie..), Chow Yun Fat gets Lung out of a mental institution and attempts to nurse him back to mental health, while protecting him from the many people who are making attempts on his life. Chow Yun Fat’s character is a real weirdo. I’m used to seeing him as the calm, cool and collected good guy, but early in the movie we see him working in a restaurant when he flips out and kicks some guy’s ass for telling him his rice is too salty. It was rockin.

The first thing I have to point out about this amazing movie is that it has a lot of classic John Woo cheesiness in it. Just picture this: a guy is mortally wounded by a gunshot, and at the same time, on the other side of town, his wife is giving birth to their child. He manages to make it to a phone booth to call and check up on her. She asks him what he wants to name the child, with his dying breath, he answers “Sung Ho Yin”, which apparently means “The Spirit Of Righteousness”. Classic!!

I have to say though, hands down the funniest part of the movie comes in the “breakthrough scene” where Chow Yun Fat’s character finally gets Lung to eat for himself again. They are both stuffing food into their mouths while their faces have the look of utmost joy on them. (Check out the screenshots, otherwise you just won’t understand…)

There’s no questioning the fact that this movie made me laugh out loud numerous times. As far as I’m concerned, laughing out loud is never a bad thing. Over the top action movies with ridiculously superhuman stunts are a lot of fun, and no one knows how to pull that stuff off better than Woo.

As you might expect, there are plenty of kick ass action sequences, and that is all that really matters here. At times I didn’t necessarily understand why each fight was taking place, but that was of secondary importance. They definitely save the best for last, because the chaos that ensues at the end of the movie will leave your jaw hanging on the ground. Combined with music reminiscent of a cheesy 80’s cop show like Miami Vice, it is an unstoppable force!

As for the DVD itself, I will mention that there is not much in the way of special features, although you do have the choice of watching the dubbed or subtitled version (both of which are equally cheesy). I’ve read somewhere that a lot of the video versions of this movie had really bad subtitles, but the ones on the DVD weren’t noticeably hard to follow. There are also a few trailers for the movie, including the international trailer which starts off with a funny voiceover saying “Gangsters, Guns and Girls… A Better Tomorrow II”. Yep, that pretty much sums it up right there!

This is my first DVD review I’ve done, so I went a little nutso on the screen captures. I hope you enjoy them. Just remember, it’s a lot more fun to experience them in full motion! (ie. Go out and rent it jerks!) — Sean