timothycrugnale 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.

MBunge The Flock is another one of those films you see sitting on the shelf at your local video store and you are perplexed because it has big stars in it, but you've never heard of it before. I call these Alzheimers Films because they make you wonder why you don't remember hearing anything about them. Unlike most of its brethren, The Flock is fairly good, even if it swerves a bit too much out of realism and into melodrama. The film starts out strongly enough, though, that you're willing to forgive the plot holes that crop up in its second half.Erroll Babbage (Richard Gere) works for the New Mexico Department of Public Safety. His job is to keep track of a list of registered sex offenders, which he refers to as his "flock", and Erroll is almost as obsessive about that as the rapists and child molesters are about their deviant desires. Erroll is constantly circling stories of abduction and sexual violence in the newspaper and checking to see if one of his "flock" is responsible. He harasses his assigned offenders and isn't above beating the crap out of them if he feels they're getting out of line.Largely because of his frightening intensity and nearly maniacal focus, Erroll is being forcible retired. With a month left of the job, he's assigned to train a new sex offender supervisor named Alison Lowry (Claire Danes). She seems almost comically unprepared for the job compared to the unrelenting Erroll and is hesitant to accept what Erroll has to teach her about sex offenders, who they are and what they're capable of. But when a young woman disappears and Erroll finds a taunting clue that one of his "flock" might be responsible, these two complete opposites must rely on each other as they plunge into the darkness of exploitation, violation and murder to save the missing girl and as much of their own humanity as they can.The best thing about this film is the character of Erroll Babbage, both the magnetic performance of Richard Gere and the way the character is used to examine the corrosive nature of violent sexual predation. Erroll isn't a cop. He's a civil servant who's been called upon to act as an ever vigilant sentinel against people who can only achieve satisfaction through the misuse, abuse and even butchery of others. Erroll takes that responsibility so seriously it nearly destroys him as a functional human being, yet even more disturbing than that is the idea other people with this job don't take it as seriously. How many end up suffering at the hands of a sex offender because of the 9-to-5, "it's just a job" attitude of people like Alison Lowry? The Flock suggests that not only can sex offenders not be safely reintegrated into society, but that the act of corralling and controlling them is too corrupting to those who try to do it.The rest of the movie isn't quite a strong as its main character, however. The second half gets much more theatrical, becoming a depraved version of the standard "race to find the missing girl" story. There are also some moments when it gets really hard to believe and/or accept that Erroll and Alison don't call in the real cops to handle the situation and there's one scene where the story needs to get from point A to point B and the writers apparently didn't know how to do it, so they just wrote something really stupid to get the job done. And while Claire Danes does a nice job, her role is woefully undeveloped.It's not perfect, but The Flock is good enough to make you wonder why it never got a chance to play in theaters. It's certainly better than a lot of the crap that does.

Paul Andrews The Flock starts as Department of Public Safety official Erroll Babbage (Richard Gere) has just eighteen days left until he retires, Erroll's job is to keep track of paroled sex offenders & rapists who he calls his 'flock'. Erroll is introduced to Allison Lowry (Claire Danes) his replacement, it's up to Errol to show Allison in eighteen days what has taken him eighteen years to learn. While scanning the local newspapers Erroll spots that a seventeen year old girl named Harriet Wells (Kristina Sisco) has been abducted, for somewhat random reasons Erroll suspects that one of his 'flock' may be responsible for the abduction & uses his last eighteen days to try & save the life of Harriet before she ends up just another victim...Produced & directed by Wai-kenung Lau under the pseudonym Andrew Lau this crappy serial killer thriller had a turbulent production, after filming Lau was fired by the studio & producers who then made their own cut of the film which was released across Europe & was the one I saw & thus will be basing my comments on. Then Niels Mueller was brought in to direct some uncredited re-shoots & an entirely different cut of the film was put together, the European cut is about ten minutes longer & the two are edited differently with scenes appearing in different order & both version lose & gain footage over the other. Anyway, while I can't really comment on the US version I pretty much hated the European cut, the whole film is an absolute mess from start to finish. The plot is awful, I guess the makers were going for an edgy serial killer thriller like Se7en (1995) or The Silence of the Lambs (1991) with a race against time to track down a killer & save a life or two. The character's are awful, I think we are meant to empathise with Erroll but he comes across as a lifeless shell while Allison just doesn't have the grit needed for such a tough job. The investigation aspect of The Flock is strictly routine, the script feels like a cheap throwaway TV cop drama with no real twists or surprises & little to no dramatic impact as there's lots of talking, self pitying & turmoil but the script forgets to deliver anything gripping or engaging & I really did hate The Flock as a film. The European cut runs over 100 minutes which is far to long for such a crap film, we never see the the victim Harriet before the end so we never feel sorry for her & strangely we only ever see her parents once very briefly so the parental loss angle is also wasted. There are so many problems with The Flock it's just not funny, why did that guy set is Dog on Erroll? Why not just kill the guy? Would pointing a loaded gun at your partners head & threatening to kill her really make her trust you & risk her life & career for you? How did that black guy at the end know where Harriet was? A frustrating nothing sort of ending that is neither here nor there just rounds things off badly & left me totally unsatisfied. If you like great cop serial killer crime films then give The Flock a miss.The most startling part of The Flock is the text that begins the film, it says that there are over half a million registered sex offenders in the US & for every thousand offenders there is only one caseworker that monitors them which is sort of scary when you think about it. The violence & gore are minimal, a few people are beaten up, there are some photos of severed limbs & a couple of mouldy dead bodies but nothing else. Another big difference between the two different versions is that the European one has that really awful machine gun editing, fades, white-outs & strange editing while the US one is far more straight forward apparently & tones down the annoying attempts at style. The whole film has a somewhat desaturated look & the there's not much colour here.The IMDb says that The Flock had a budget of about $35,000,000 which amazes me, where did all the money go? Next to nothing happens. Filmed in New Mexico. I can't believe the cast in this, Richard Gere looks lost, Claie Danes is miscast & is just an observer 90% of the time while pop star Avril Lavign hasn't been in a film since this was says it all.The Flock is a terrible serial killer thriller with no twists or surprises & the level of investigation is as basic as they come, a really unsatisfying, annoyingly made mess of a film. I am not sure if the US version is any better but it sure can't be any worse, can it?

charlytully Ambrose no doubt will empathize with the decline of Richard Gere (here, parole officer Errol Babbage) if he couples his initial viewing of THE FLOCK with PRETTY WOMAN as a prequel. Though Claire Danes (playing Errol's partner Allison Lowry) has replaced Julia Roberts as Gere's horse-faced woman, Father Time has reduced the chemistry between this pairing by 99% compared to the previous movie, also staged among the milieu of the horsey set. Bierce will get a kick out of the opening, as well, with the teen girls riding astride in a manner which probably diverges from what was considered "proper" during his own youth in the late 1850s.TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: The body of noted American author (An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge) Ambrose Bierce, born June 24, 1842, recently was discovered in total cryogenic hibernation at the back of a Central American warehouse. Bierce is expected to be fully defrosted by late 2049 or early 2050. Based on my 85 previously posted IMDb comments and background in Bierce studies, the author's guardians have commissioned me to review a periodically updated list of films to help guide his future leisure pursuits, with the provision that my comments also be made available to the general public.