The Pledge is a 2001 dramatic psychological thriller directed by Sean Penn. It is based on a novel of the same name by Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt. Dürrenmatt wrote the novel to refine the theme he originally developed in the screenplay for the 1958 film Es geschah am hellichten Tag (It Happened in Broad Daylight).

Set in England in 1790 the film begins by showing a pedlar walking through the Northern hills. He comes across a dead highwayman hanging from a gibbet. At a nearby inn the highwayman's former henchmen plot to fulfil their pledge to bury the body in a churchyard and send the highwayman's soul to paradise. In flashback we see the highwayman was a rapist, murderer and thief. In the black of night his comrades in crime cut him down and bury him in the tomb of an archbishop to free his soul. The film ends as the soul enters heaven to a chorus of angels. Written by Enoch Sneed

The night he retires as a Nevada sheriff, Jerry Black pledges to the mother of a murdered girl that he will find the killer. Jerry doesn't believe the police arrested the right man; he discovers this is the third incident in the area in the recent past with victims young, blond, pretty, and small for their age. So he buys an old gas station in the mountains near the crimes in order to search for a tall man who drives a black station wagon, gives toy porcupines as gifts, and calls himself the wizard: clues from a drawing by the dead girl. Jerry's solitary life gives way to friendship with a woman and her small, blond daughter. Has Jerry neglected something that may prove fatal? Written by