Right off the bat I know you're thinking "Richard Gere?... yeah... right." And who can blame you. Between Pretty Woman, and so many rampant rumor involving gerbils over the years, you have to take his credibility as a tough guy into question at some point.
The Flock though, shows Gere at his gritty best, as a stressed out Department of Public Safety worker who has basically fallen to pieces after so many years of wrangling sex offenders. You see, Errol not only acts as a sex offender probation officer, but he tends to hound them and treat them like animals, and has even gone vigilante on a few of them. With three weeks left until his forced early retirement, he finds himself again forced into something, this time to train his replacement, cute little Claire Danes.
Allison is bright eyed and bushy tailed and ready to fight the good fight, within the confines of the law of course. She believes that sex offenders can be rehabilitated, while Errol believes that they're all monsters beyond redemption. She learns that lesson quick enough as they both get drawn deeper into the case of a missing girl, and are forced to delve into the seedy underbelly of the city's rapists and pedo's to find her.
It sounds trite and cliche, but really, this movie isn't that at all. The Flock is a pretty gritty and intense thriller, which shows that dealing with monsters can and most likely will make you become one as well. Gere is great here as the veteran perv wrangler who has seen too much in his day, and he elicits we the viewer to feel his pain. He also elicited me to cheer him on in his creepo vigilante mission, because I'm all for dishing it out to those that need dishing. It being vengeance of course.
This is one of our under the radar faves here at THC; not because it's a perfect or even an amazing film, but because the subject matter is so creepy and compelling, that we can't help but love the dysfunction of it all. Sexual offenders are everywhere, and truth be told, they're probably closer to us on a daily basis than we will ever know or care to. That's not me trying to sound paranoid or alarmist, but the fact of the matter is that plenty of people are into odd, nasty and even sickening things, and most of them don't stay in jail too long.
If you like crime thrillers with creepy underbelly, then this one might just be worth your time.
B+
