Negative Positive
Title: Harrowing and difficult movie
Review: If you like to come out of a movie with a warm, glowing, fuzzy feeling, give this one a wide berth. "The Pledge" has the conviction not to succumb to the usual Hollywood ending - but neither is it contrived in avoiding stereotypes.One of the big problems the film had, I guess, is that it was marketed as a thriller. It is nothing of the sort. There's no action chases, no gunfights, and no simple resolution. Instead it's about the protagonist's slow slip into obsession, to the point where he commits a moral crime himself in his monomaniac crusade. A happy ending would have betrayed this (although, for those interested, the novel by Friedrich Dürrenmatt has an even bleaker ending).
Is the review positive or negative? 