Affaires privées

Atmospheric drama about a good cop (Andy Garcia) going after a bad cop (Richard Gere). What sets it apart is the interplay between the two leads.

My girlfriend's ex-husband worked on the set during production and she told me that the fight scenes in the film were real. Andy Garcia and Richard Gere really went at it in the elevator. The wounds they had were real, not fake. After filming had been completed, Garcia refused to attend the post-production party.

Knowing this, watch the film again. The tension between the two is palpable in just about every scene they're in together. Which makes for a pretty decent movie.

This is sort of a slow starter, but once moving it goes quite nicely. Wouldn't matter anyway, I'm not really that impatient when it comes to a story I want to see.

Figgis, directs this internal-power struggle police story, with a candid view. Mike does a good job of building suspense, then,"BOOM!" It explodes in your face. This was also, between the actors, Garcia,(Raymond Avilla) and Gear's Officer Dennis Peck, an odd but interesting match-up. I think that the perfect cat and mouse game was this stories 'pearl'. These two shined along with others that rounded out the casting. There was a certain hatred between both characters that was just right, for the story-liner. It shows, in the story cops relating to spouses and family in stress produced situations as well as the other civil servants that we don't see on a public basis.

I thought that the way, this was set and brought to a scorching climax was well met by those that saw the movie. I think that Figgis set out and accomplished what he was looking for here. (***) Well Done.

Meet Dennis Peck, a real live sociopath. And he's got a badge and a gun. This character might be one of the most truly evil creations in the movies. On the surface, he seems like a terrific guy, a wonderful dad who plays with his kids on his days off. Even his ex-wives like him. But he's used his influence and his skill at manipulating people to create a virtual empire of wealth and power. Andy Garcia is excellent as Raymond Avila, who stumbles across this web and begins to dismantle it. The level of supporting actors is fantastic, much better than most movies. Standouts include Nancy Travis as Andy's wife, Laurie ("Roseanne") Metcalf as his partner, and a young William Baldwin as Peck's partner. I rate this movie 8 out of 10.

Internal Affairs is a thriller with a lot of nerve. It takes risks, presenting the audience with a grim and violent story of police corruption. It doesn't care if you like it or hate it, just that it does its job of getting under your skin. The main reason the movie is so effective is because of Richard Gere's powerhouse performance. It caught me off guard, since before I saw it I'd always seen him as the hero or love interest, far from the territory he's in here. I'll get more into Gere's performance later, just let me clear up the plot.

Gere is Dennis Peck, respected vice cop, father and husband, determined to do the job. Oh, he's also the dirtiest cop on the force. He plants evidence, shoots suspects, sets up his fellow officers, doing it all without a shed of remorse. The hero of the movie is Raymond Avila (Andy Garcia), newly assigned to the Internal Affairs division of the LAPD and a friend of Peck's partner, Van Stretch (Stephen Baldwin). When Stretch introduces Peck and Avila it's obvious they don't like each other. Not getting along becomes an understatement as Avila starts to uncover Peck's corrupt behavior and looks to put a stop to it. But Peck won't go down without a fight, and he'll do whatever he can to keep Internal Affairs off his back.

As far as police thrillers go, Internal Affairs is one of the meaner kind. Rather than put us into the normal day of a cop it decides to put us into the normal day of bad cop, a really bad cop. This is a guy who would kill a man for stepping on his shoe. He'd probably kill his family too, and laugh while he was doing it. Think I'm exaggerating? Not so much. Peck is the embodiment of all the bad guys in police thrillers and none of the cops in them.

Of all of the actors you could find to play a guy like this, who would have guessed that a likable actor like Richard Gere would ever fit the bill. Does he ever. He gives that kind of against type performance we see a lot from normally good guy actors. We've seen it from Denzel Washington (Training Day), Tom Cruise (Collateral), and Robin Williams (Insomnia) in the past few years. Each of these guys have given performances that have altogether changed how we see them as actors. Gere is no exception here. He seems to be having a blast too, chewing the scenery every chance he gets.

He's surrounded by some good supporting work. Andy Garcia gives Avila a kind of determination you'd expect from a guy who's life has been wrecked by a guy like Peck. As his partner, Laurie Metcalf is likable and isn't as wasted as she could have been.

But when it all comes down to it, this is Gere's show, and he shines in his only truly villainous role to date. He probably had enough of playing the villain by the time he was done with this movie. That would make sense. After playing a guy like Dennis Peck, any actor would need time off from playing the bad guy. I'd like to see Gere play the bad guy again though, and give us another surprising and terrifically evil performance.

In Internal Affairs LAPD cop Andy Garcia finds himself transferred there and finds out despite the snow job given him, it's quite true nobody likes these people in the department. He's going to be even less popular because his first assignment with new partner Laurie Metcalf is to investigate William Baldwin, a guy he went through the Academy with.

Baldwin's got a load of brutality complaints against him. He suspects his wife Faye Grant of being unfaithful which turns out to be the case. However Garcia's and Metcalf's investigation of Baldwin leads to uncovering a hole host of illegal activities linked to his partner Richard Gere.

Gere in this film has one of the most amoral characters ever put on celluloid. His corruption goes way beyond just taking a few dollars to fix parking tickets. In fact he's corrupted a whole slew of his fellow officers without a bit of remorse.

Garcia also has a lot of issues and might not be the best guy in the world to take Gere down. Gere presses a lot of Andy's buttons, one of the things that makes him so dangerous is that he is a master psychologist without a degree.

Although Internal Affairs gets a bit too melodramatic at times, the cast performs well in their roles and fans of Richard Gere and Andy Garcia should definitely see this.