The Flock

Description

Richard Gere stars in The Flock as Errol Babbage, a government employee in charge of tracking registered sex offenders who has become convinced he can tell when they're about to offend again. When a young girl is kidnapped, he loses his bearings and sinks into a violent obsession, dragging his new partner (Claire Danes) into a dogged investigation that includes abusive interrogations, flagrant violations of civil rights, and a whole lot of sexual tension between the two of them. The Flock is the sort of overheated thriller that wants to condemn sexual deviance while depicting it in absurdly lurid and titillating ways (the scenes in a porn studio/fetish market are slathered with moral indignation but ooze with repressed lust). The movie wants to be a portrait of a passionate man who risks becoming what he most abhors, but it's implausible at every turn. The Flock lurches from one sleazy sequence to another, intoxicated by its own hypocrisy, cheering on Babbage's vigilantism while pretending to compare it with the dangerous acting-out of the deviants. In the end, Babbage is redeemed and affirmed. Also featuring Ray Wise ( Twin Peaks ), KaDee Strickland ( Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid ), French Stewart ( 3rd Rock from the Sun ), and an extremely brief appearance by pop star Avril Lavigne. --Bret Fetzer This film is about a hyper-vigilant employee of the department of public safety who, while training his young female replacement, has to track down a missing girl who he is convinced is connected to a paroled sex offender he is investigating.