The Flock (2007)

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Blistering performances.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Pretty boring. Whole thing feels like a director from Criminal Minds shot it and I don't mean that in a good way. Danes was horrible in this flick. The only gem in here was Ray Wise, excellent acting by him, as always. Don't waste your time, unless your having trouble sleeping.

I saw this on a premium channel with Marie as we were pet-sitting in Brooklyn.Richard Gere is Erroll Babbage, a soon to retire city employee. He has a replacement to train, Claire Danes as Allison Lowry. I like both Gere and Danes, so it was entertaining to see them. However I found the actual story depicted to be very marginal, and hardly worth the time to watch it.The central story involves a serial killer, and part of his or her crime scene signature are the body parts, all cut up. There is a scene where lots of body parts are discovered, and I found it poor movie-making.There is a missing young lady and they fear she may become the next fatality. So the story involves looking for clues and finding her while she is still alive.A note of interest, singer Avril Lavigne has a small role as Beatrice Bell.

Claire Danes has an enthralling set of features. She has a large jaw and chin, a wide mouth, an aquiline nose that flares out at the bottom in such a way that, on the Frankfurt horizontal, it would resemble one of those perfect isosceles triangles we studied in high school geometry. She has bulky zygomatics, and the default setting for her eyelids is slightly wider than normal so that she always looks either slightly surprised or fully aghast. All of her generous features are framed here by her long blond hair, which gives her a certain more vulnerable character. I don't think her face would work as well under a brunette mop. It's hard to tell how much acting talent she has. She was quite good in "The Rainmaker" but no more than adequate here. I wish she could find more challenging roles, ones that would give her a chance to plumb her range as an actress. I think I'll bill her for this assessment of her career. Anybody have her number? In "The Flock," she's a newbie at the Department of Public Safety, an organization that is supposed to keep track of the location and activities of sex offenders. It's not a very promising set up. Every registered offender we see looks queer in one way or another -- maybe their hair is too long, or their expressions mournful, or they're fat and their eyeballs bulge, or their smiles are too self-satisfied and greasy.That's bad enough. Stereotypical casting. The guilty parties have committed crimes that range from brutal, sadistic acts to making advances to underaged girls -- which would put Jerry Lee Lewis and half the 20-year-old males in America in the slams.But then Richard Gere, gone gray but still looking okay, is the zealous agent who is fighting retirement and must train Claire Danes in the ways of the evildoers. He's suffering from the Dirty Harry Syndrome in that he takes his work too seriously and disregards some of the rules. (One of his peccadilloes is carrying an unauthorized pistol.) On top of that, all these child molesters and slashers seem to know and support one another, which contradicts existing research. Most of these guys are like alcoholics. They're ashamed of what they've done and have no more solidarity than schizophrenics, who have no sense of community at all.So it looks like we're going to get a typical rogue cop movie in which Gere solves a case by unorthodox means, tracks down the sneering villains, and dispatches them to save the spreadeagled victim. He'll probably have to turn over his badge and gun to an angry boss first.It turns out to be a little more complicated than that. Gere is no pragmatist. He's no Dirty Harry, just doing what needs to be done. He really IS nuts. Oh, he's right, in the end, but still comes on at times like a raving lunatic. And it's always interesting to see the perfectly normal but constantly strutting Richard Gere taking a crack at being a maniac.The photography is great. The set design is generic slasher. The plot is, at times, confusing and overall not the film's strong suit. I couldn't exactly follow the reasoning behind every incident.The worst, the most demeaning, of the film's properties, though, is the relish with which it depicts torture. The principal villains team up to torture a young woman to death after treating her unspeakably for days. She's tied to a bed, cut and bruised, and there are indications that she's been made to eat feces. When the time arrives for the final orgasmic act, one of the sadists screams, "Get the BIG knife!" (The other picks up a meat cleaver.) It's a thought-provoking movie. The thought it provokes is, "What kind of people are we turning into?" Torture can be done with taste, for want of a better word, as in "Seven." But in "Seven," absolutely none of it was shown on the screen. Here we see rotting cadavers, cutting of flesh, screaming young girls, photos of chopped-off limbs.Who is this film aimed at? That is, who is the audience? Presumably people who enjoy seeing agonizing pain inflicted on others. Is that really who we are? Is that who we want to be?

Gere and Danes star as 2 workers for the department of public safety who keep track of released sex offenders. Gere, who plays Babbage, refers to them as his flock. Gere is an over obsessed vigilante whom is on his way out. He is training, new comer Allison, to take over his job. Gere sees his flock as very sick, disturbed puppies. He asks them questions that are not on the list, and tries to act like the police and solve crimes. He keeps getting warned for this behavior, hence the reason he is being replaced. During his final few days on the job, a young girl goes missing, and Babbage is sure it is one of his flock whom has gone astray. Him and Allison narrow a list down and discover some of the offenders have gone AWOL. So, he decides that he needs to track the missing girl down rather than help the police. That part is a little far fetched.There is some sick, twisted stuff shown in this film. Like when Babbage and Allison go to this building where a bunch of sick people do disturbing things to each other. Also, there are the people who kidnapped the girl. At the end of the film, we see what sick freaks they are. However, I wouldn't call this movie excessive because not really much is shown on film.FINAL VERDICT: If you like thrillers and films about serial killers and cops chasing killers, then you will like this.