The Flock Reviews

I wasn’t expecting much from this flick but since I have a weak spot for Richard Gere and Claire Danes, I thought I should give it a try anyway. Honestly, the whole thing had some potential, the material (an overzealous and obsessed public servant follows some sexual offenders) was really interesting and even though it was rather clumsy, the first half was not bad at all. Unfortunately, in the second half, from the moment they went to this ‘House of Pain’, the whole thing just became a pathetic and incoherent mess. Concerning the ‘House of Pain’, how did they get there? How is possible that such place would exist with some registered sexual offender(s) ? Furthermore, the biggest strength of this movie was Babbage's struggle as the guy did this job for far too long and now was clearly losing it. However, in the second half, they chose a path which completely shattered this idea. Indeed, basically, every single hunch Babbage had in the 1st half, happened to become 100% true (about Edmund Grooms, about Viola Frye, about Glenn Curtis). So, instead of being a very troubled man losing his mind, he became a misunderstood crime genius which was just really disappointing. Furthermore, the guy was a public servant, not a g*d*mned cop, it didn’t make any sense to make him/them investigate this case like this. Concerning Richard Gere, honestly, sometimes he can be quite good but, this time, he just gave one of his wooden performances and he was not really convincing. Concerning Claire Danes, I thought she was better than Gere but I thought it was utterly unconvincing to make us believe that such a pretty girl would be the perfect candidate for a job which basically consists of some daily confrontations with some registered sexual offenders. I was really surprised to find out afterwards that the director, Andrew Lau, was the same guy who made ‘Infernal Affairs’, one of my favorite Asian movies. Anyway, to conclude, even though the material was pretty good, the end result was rather disappointing and I don’t think it is really worth a look.