2001 film by Sean Penn
The Pledge is a 2001 American neo-noir psychological mystery thriller drama film co-produced and directed by Sean Penn and starring Jack Nicholson alongside an ensemble supporting cast of Patricia Clarkson, Aaron Eckhart, Helen Mirren, Robin Wright Penn, Vanessa Redgrave, Sam Shepard, Mickey Rourke, Tom Noonan, Lois Smith and Benicio del Toro. It competed at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival.
The Pledge is based on Friedrich Dürrenmatt's 1958 novella The Pledge: Requiem for the Detective Novel. Dürrenmatt wrote the novella to refine the theme he originally developed in the screenplay for the 1958 German-language film It Happened in Broad Daylight with Heinz Rühmann.
Plot summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.