Wonderfully offbeat film!
Sorry, this movie sucks
Best movie ever!
An absolute waste of money
I thought this movie deserved way more stars then it has been given. I can see why people want to compare it with Se7en or Silence of the lambs because of the sex offenders and sadistic tendencies of the criminals. Well it's the same kind of story but I would not compare it with the other masterpieces that are way better then this one. This movie has just its own story and I enjoyed it from the beginning till the end. Richard Gere gave a solid performance as the sex offender hunter. It's just a nice entertaining movie and honestly I don't get why people would be disappointed to watch this movie. There are way worse movies then this one.
View MoreDespite that this should be by now ordinary to me, I continually become amazed when the mainstream American movie industry panders with amazingly clinging loyalty to the the American public their tendency to fanaticize and obsess over the obscene. To translate...When discussing the grotesque and the macabre, abuse, torture and destruction of human life, we become most fascinated when such things are done in a bizarre fashion. Of course, it only profits to connect the dots of this fascination to the fetishists. I can't specify enough not only how incorrect, but how harmful this is.I understand how disgusting the American public must find the idea of S/M, BDSM, and Fetishism. That being said, it is blissfully unaware of the simple difference between people who consensually engage in such acts and those individuals that enjoy abusing victims without any permission to do so. It sounds so simple, yet is so essential - at every moment in the movie the berated and obsessed yet righteous agent "uncovers" how his hapless clients like to abuse and sometimes kill women. The fetishists are intermingled with men who mutilate, rape, and kill women. This is beyond cheap - this is discrimination.There is a large difference between a woman who wants to be bound and whipped and a man who is doing this to her, and a man who likes to do this to women who don't want it. Sadism is a term misused - there is a DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ODD SEXUAL ACTS AND ABUSIVE CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR. This movie is an insult to the first amendment rights of every American citizen. That being said, this movie breeds ignorance of this. People who engage in S/M are not child molesters and rapists. Sometimes molesters and rapists may like some of the S/M pornographic material. However, there are many individuals who engage in S/M, and they have no prior abuse records, no troubled childhoods, and have no intention to harm anyone who doesn't specifically request and agree to it. Yes, masochists find sadists, indeed, need sadists, as the other half of their happy perverse existence. Neither breaks the law. Particularly annoying was when the agent had a consensual couple in public this time, leaving it very difficult for him to go on his violent paranoid rant, so he chose to annoy and harass them instead, who basically told him to go and sit on it. So, basically, according to this movie, any abnormal sexual behavior will be persecuted by the state. What I'd like to know is, what is the point of this people's jobs? And what are they saying about our rights?
View MoreI finally caught "The Flock" on HBO. A taping at 4:20 am while I was asleep, true, but it's better watched at that hour, methinks. It was apparently only released to theaters in Japan and Turkey, from all reports, but North Americans really didn't miss much.It's professionally produced, pairs Claire Danes memorably with Richard Gere, and makes their interplay (standard retiring-burnout-and-protégé) entirely believable in most ways.The gore and corpses aren't beyond those in many modern horror movies, though the camera often lingers more than it should. The fetishes (and worse) of Gere's monitored ex-cons shouldn't shock anyone who's ever been in a triple-X shop.Danes's acting is superb, especially in pursuing an abductor's trail (standard police-procedural, though by non-cops) with Gere's brooding and effective Errol. What blew a hole in this, though, is that she was miscast in the first place.Even though one of Gere's well-worn "flock" is female, nearly all are intimidating men, and the role her character Allison is training to take up calls for more heft. Both physically and professionally.I didn't believe for one minute that Allison chose such a grueling job out of anything more than economic need, certainly not from any more personal calling. No hints are made as to her motivation, nor is anything mentioned of her personal life, beyond nosy behavior and a clumsy allusion by compulsive background-checker Errol.It's a miscasting on a par with what was done with Danes in "The Mod Squad," but unlike that idiocy of a plot-mangled remake, this gives Danes a quite strong setup — and much gore and many sad fetishes — to play against. If you accept that someone of her perception and refinement would ever take that job in the first place, that is.Turn to it on cable, but I wouldn't take the effort to even go to the video store or put it in a Netflix queue. It's worth one viewing.(Most of this review originally appeared on the IMDb board for Claire Danes, followed by considerable discussion.)
View MoreThis is the first review I've wrote for IMDb so bare with me, but I caught this flick on HBO and was sure glad I watched it. Richard Gere is great in this film as the passionate agent/detective who bends the rules to get the job done. I think the story is great, and there's never a dull scene that slows the pace of the movie down. Some parts of the movie which have to do with demented sex addicts are pretty shocking, but if you've ever seen a crime film like Se7en, you'll be able to stomach the scenes just fine. So all in all, if you're looking for a good detective/suspense movie, ignore the low rating this movie got on IMDb and definitely watch it.
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