Category: Costas Mandylor

THE PLEDGE

By Marc S. Sanders

The Pledge is a moody and bleak crime drama that follows a retired detective’s descent into obsessive madness.

Director Sean Penn opens his film with the gruesome discovery of a murdered nine year old girl found amid the snow covered woods outside a small Nevada town.  She happens to be discovered on the evening of veteran detective Jerry Black’s (Jack Nicholson) retirement party.  Upon receiving word of the crime, Jerry leaves his celebration to explore the scene that is carelessly compromised by the local sheriffs.  His protege partner Stan (Aaron Eckhart) rushes through a possible suspect’s (Benicio Del Toro) interrogation that draws a quick conclusion along with an unnecessary and bloody outcome.

Jerry surrenders his position with the police department, but he’s not entirely convinced the crime has been solved.  He obligates himself to uphold a devout promise he gave to the victim’s parents (Patricia Clarkson, Michael O’Keefe) that he will catch their daughter’s killer.

Time passes and rather than retire into a quiet life of fishing, Jerry purchases an old gas station located within the vicinity of the crime scene as well as nearby where two other murders with similar circumstances occurred.  Jerry is going to wait out the next attempt committed by “The Wizard” or “The Racoon Killer,” and catch him in the act.

The Pledge is a brooding and lonely film.  Sean Penn’s piece offers an impressive list of who’s who actors that appear in small roles to shape out the detective’s progress.  Amidst all of these familiar names in the cast, Jack Nicholson has never appeared so isolated or despondent before.  His character is limited on dialogue.  A thin mustache and a wrinkled complexion with a smoking habit hide any humor or joy.  Jerry Black knows he’s the last capable police detective in this area.  It pains him to abandon his post to the halfwits he leaves behind.

A promise is a dangerous gesture.  If you adhere to it, all obstacles become nonexistent.  Anything will be done to uphold a pledge and conclude your wild theories, even if proof is not conveniently supplemented.   Nothing stands in the way of pledge.  

The second half of The Pledge moves at a slower pace when Jerry welcomes an abused mother (Robin Wright Penn) and her daughter into his home.  A new life seems destined for these three people but at what cost?  Is the hero of this film at least as dangerous as the psychopath that supposedly remains at large?

Would you go to the great lengths that Jerry puts himself through?  Is the expense of his own sanity, and the safety of an innocent woman and her daughter worth this pursuit?

Sean Penn’s film does not operate on suspense. What action there is only fuels Jerry’s chase at a long-shot truth.  It’s a slow burn crime drama that makes the central murder a far second priority to how the initial discovery overtakes the main character.  Again, this kind of mania is a different breed from Jack Nicholson’s other crazed portrayals found in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Five Easy Pieces, or The Shining.  Nicholson is not as vocal or expressive in this role.  Yet, we all know what drives this guy with what few words he uses.

Robin Wright Penn and Nicholson share some effective scenes together. Their motive to be with one another stems from a misery loves company ideal. Good casting here, and throughout the film with small appearances from Helen Mirren, Harry Dean Stanton, Sam Shepard, Vanessa Redgrave, Mickey Rourke, Tom Noonan, Clarkson, O’Keefe, Del Toro and Eckhart.

Sean Penn is very good at creating visual moods to his film. The image of Nicholson standing within the pen of a crowded turkey farm with the anguished parents of the victim is truly haunting. Animals of all kinds seem to emote a cold harshness as well. The first image to appear consists of a swarm of large, winged birds soaring above this backwoods area where the biggest thing to happen is a town parade. Otherwise, as one girl tells Jerry there’s nothing else to do here. This remote Nevada area is unprotected from greater powers, and its only guardian is forced to accept retirement, leaving his community vulnerable. This formerly decorated Marine is now a formerly decorated cop, and the unseen animals-or monsters-still roam.

I won’t spoil the ending which I commend, but there is one moment that Sean Penn includes in the final cut that is objectionable.  For the first time in the picture since Jerry Black accepted the case, one moment near the end of the movie tells the audience everything they need to know while leaving Jerry in the dark.  I think it was a poor choice to go this way.  The audience is going along with Jerry’s pursuit until they are spoon fed a resolution they didn’t earn because Jerry never arrives at this conclusion.  A better route would be to leave the audience in the same dizzying haze that Jerry must live with.  Some hanging threads should be left untied. The Pledge is a pot boiling, well-made and disturbing film, but with minutes to go before the end credits roll, a less is more approach should have been adopted.

SOAPDISH

By Marc S. Sanders

To get inside the head of a character on a soap opera would best be portrayed by someone who’s literally living a soap opera off the set.  That’s the paramount theme of every member of the cast and crew of the daytime drama The Sun Also Sets.  Everyone is living through their own checkered background from the lead actress to the returning actor to the homeless deaf/mute extra on down to the trampy nurse and the buxom doctor on the show. By default, the program’s head writer and the producer fall into this category as well. 

The hilarity found in Soapdish gave me remembrances of classic films like All About Eve and Sunset Blvd. Ego and stardom are treasured commodities above all else and an actress’s greatest fear is being aged out of fandom and replaced by the new girl in town. 

Celeste Talbert (Sally Field) is a star actress with dozens of career awards but an insecurity with becoming past her prime. A diva concern is that the stories written for her are not worthy of her importance to the show.  David (Robert Downey Jr) is the young producer feeling the pressure to come up with something to boost the ratings before his boss, the always naturally funny Garry Marshall, replaces the program with game shows.  On David’s side for her own ulterior motives is Montana Moorehead (Cathy Moriarty) who plays the resident nurse and is ready to take the reins from Celeste and make the show her own.  She’ll seductively manipulate David into getting things to work out her way. 

In the meantime, Lori Craven (Elisabeth Shue) sneaks onto the set seeking an opportunity by way of Aunt Celeste.  Best she can get is to portray a deaf/mute homeless woman extra.  Head writer Rose (Whoopi Goldberg) has devised a new plot where Celeste’s character will be tried for murdering Lori’s homeless mute character.  Lastly, at least through the first thirty minutes of the film, Jeffrey Anderson’s (Kevin Kline) character who died on the show twenty years prior by an unfortunate beheading is recruited out of dinner theater by David to return to the program.  Both Lori and Jeffrey’s unexpected arrivals do not sit well with Celeste.

Following along okay, so far? Well…

SECRETS ABOUND on Soapdish!

This film was developed by the powers who delivered Steel Magnolias to the big screen a few years prior.  The original playwright and screenwriter, Robert Harling, teamed up with Andrew Bergman, to satirize the weepy material that daytime drama promises and which he embraced seriously with his beloved play.  The director of Magnolias, Herbert Ross, also serves as an executive producer on this film.  To add some extra authentic spice, Aaron Spelling is producer.  That’s right.  The guy who produced Dynasty, 90210 and Melrose Place.  Michael Hoffman directs. 

The look of this film is so odd and has a garish blood coated red appearance to the television studio where the show within the movie is set, as well as to the offices that hover above.  The set designer for the film, Eugenio Zanetti was inspired by Dante’s Inferno.  Makes sense really because no one is ever satisfied with how The Sun Also Sets develops from one atrociously delicious storyline to the next, and how it makes them look in the public eye.  Zanetti is quoted as saying the offices of the producers and writers hover above the set for the soap opera.  So, it looks as if the powers that be are staring down into the depths of hell that the cast and crew must work and reside in.  While it looks odd, after having seen the film, I can’t help but believe Zanetti makes sense.

There are moments here that are outright hilarious.  As a community theater actor and director, I can totally relate to Kline’s character being stuck in a retirement community steak/playhouse performing as Willie Loman in Death Of A Salesman while elderly patrons call for their waiters.  Poor Jeffrey also has to project that much louder for the old folks to hear him.  This scene stands as gold on its own. A whole farcical film could be developed on this side story alone. 

Soapdish does lose some of its comedic appeal before it reaches the middle of the picture when secrets are uncovered related to Celeste, Jeffrey, Lori and so on.  Sally Field goes for great physical comedy that lands perfectly with the skeletons that Celeste pulls out of the closet.  Kevin Kline makes for a hysterical arguing scene partner, and the craziness just gets bigger from there. 

Whoopi Goldberg is also very funny as the one with common sense and brains behind her character.  For once, she’s not going for the female Eddie Murphy equivalent.  I’m with Rose when she vents to David about how she’s supposed to write a believable return from the dead of a character who was killed when he lost his head.  Maybe a brain transplant?

Cathy Moriarty does a fine job of being the conniving seductress.  She’s a full-bodied intimidator of teased, frizzy blond hair and a buxom nurse’s uniform costume against Robert Downey, Jr.’s nervous preppy producer.

There’s satisfying moments for cameos from Carrie Fisher as a casting director as well as Teri Hatcher and Costas Mandylor as bubbleheaded supporting characters.  However, the best scene stealer is Garry Marshall. I don’t think a single line he’s given would be as funny if he was not providing them.  He’s just got that Neil Simon kind of delivery as the studio boss.  “The nurse is in the restaurant?  Was there a meeting I missed?”

Other than a few F bombs, I think Soapdish works as movie the whole family could watch the next time they are snowed in or hunkering down from a blizzard or hurricane.  Soap operas are designed for escape and the outrageous comedy of Michael Hoffman’s film reaches into outrageous areas that work with surprise and big laughs. 

This nonpaid critic, who endures his loving wife’s adoration for General Hospital each night before bed, is at least a fan of The Sun Also Sets and Death Of A Salesman dinner theater.