The Pledge is a 2001 American neo-noir psychological mystery drama film 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 was in competition 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 film It Happened in Broad Daylight with Heinz Rühmann. Plot Aging Reno, Nevada, police detective Jerry Black attends a retirement party hosted by his department, at which Captain Pollack presents Jerry tickets to a fishing trip in Mexico as a gift. The celebration is interrupted by the discovery of a murdered child, Ginny Larsen. Jerry decides to go with another detective, Stan Krolak, to the scene of the crime. Jerry delivers the bad news to Ginny's parents, and the mother, Margaret Larsen, makes Jerry swear on a cross, made by their daughter, that he will find the killer. A suspect, Toby Jay Wadenah, a Native American man with an intellectual disability, is found the next day. Stan uses Toby's disorder to his advantage, convincing him that he killed Ginny. After having confessed to doing so, Toby steals a deputy's gun and commits suicide. An autopsy on Ginny proves that she had consumed chocolate before she died; wrappers found in Toby's truck solidify the likelihood that he killed the little girl, and the case is closed, despite Jerry’s suspicions. Still adamant about his pledge to find the killer, Jerry chooses not to go to Mexico and misses his flight. Instead, he visits Ginny's grandmother, Annalise Hansen, who tells him of the many stories that she and Ginny used to read; one tells of an angel who descends from Heaven in order to fly a deceased child over all the places they loved in life, before delivering them to God. Jerry then visits one of Ginny's friends, Becky Fiske, who reveals that she had made friends with a man she called "The Giant" shortly before she was killed. Jerry finds a picture Ginny drew of "The Giant", but it does not resemble Toby, and features a black station wagon and not the red truck driven by Toby. He takes the