Even winning an Oscar (for As Good as it Gets) for a performance that he might almost have phoned in.

Maybe he needed a real challenge; if so Sean Penn, here in the capacity of director, set him a good one with The Pledge.

Nicholson plays a Nevada cop who, the day before his retirement, has to tell a young couple that their daughter has been savagely murdered.

He is himself so appalled by the crime that he makes them a pledge to find the killer.

It's this single-minded pursuit that dominates his retirement despite his former police colleagues closing the case when a convenient suspect, the apparently retarded Benicio del Toro, kills himself while in custody.

Nicholson believes the killer is still at large and continues his painstaking investigation even when love enters his life in the shape of an abused wife and mother, Robin Wright Penn.

Gradually, absorbingly, a simple crime story, taken from a novel by Friedrich Durrenmatt, develops into something else again, something much more fascinating - the study of a good man whose obsession leads him into a kind of madness.

The supporting performances are fine and Penn handles the action with much skill.

But it's Nicholson, better than he has been for a pretty long time, who dominates proceedings.

In Hollywood he is revered by his colleagues. His performance in The Pledge reminds us why.

Barry Norman