Justiça a Qualquer Preço

It does not seem that this movie managed to please a lot of people. First off, not many seem to have seen it in the first place (I just bumped into it by accident), and then judging by the reviews and the rating, of those that did many did not enjoy it very much.

Well, I did. I usually tolerate Gere for his looks and his charm, and even though I did not consider him a great actor, I know he can do crazy pretty well (I liked his Mr Jones). But this performance is all different. He is not pretty in this one, and he is not charming. His character is completely different from anything I had seen from him up to that point---old, ugly, broken, determined. And Gere, in what to me is so far his best performance ever, pulls it off beautifully. I guess it is a sign of how well an actor does his job if you cannot imagine anyone else doing it instead---think Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, or Washington as Alonzo in Training Day. That is how good Gere was here.

The rest of the cast were fine by me, too. I guess I would not have cast Danes in this role, mostly because I think she is too good-looking for it. But she actually does an excellent job, holding her own with a Gere in top form, which is no small feat. Strickland easily delivers the best supporting act, in a part that requires a considerable range from her. I actually think she owns the key scene with Gere and Danes, and that is quite an achievement.

So what about the rest of the movie, apart from some excellent acting? The story is perhaps not hugely surprising, some 8mm-ish aspects to it, but adding the "veteran breaks in rookie" storyline to the who-dunnit, and also (like Silence of the Lambs) adding a sense of urgency through trying to save the girl and the impending retirement of Gere's character. All that is a backdrop to the development of the two main characters, as they help each other settle into their respective new stations in life. That's a lot to accomplish in a 100 minutes, but it is done well, and we end up caring for the characters and what happens to them.

Direction and photography were adequate. I could have done without the modern music-video camera movements and cutting, but then I am an old curmudgeon, and it really wasn't all that bad, in fact I think it did help with the atmosphere of the movie, which as you might have guessed, by and large isn't a happy one.

Worth seeing.

I 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.)

The Flock was nothing too original, but a movie doesn't have to be original in order for it to be good. For its few, if any, forgivable flaws as a by-the-books detective/Seven thriller, the Flock as a whole is still a taut, brooding, gritty, intense and fun little popcorn flick. Like I said, the material isn't exactly fresh but it is still far from stale and Richard Gere, who act as though he were a man possessed, elevates the script and the film that much higher in terms of overall quality. This is not bargain basement entertainment, nor did it deserve to go straight-to-video in the US, especially given the talent involved both in front of and behind the camera. The list includes: Richard Gere (in his prime), Claire Danes, Andrew Lau (director of Infernal Affairs), and of course, the Weinstein Company (who need no introduction seeing as they are Hollywood.)Despite the lack of hype, the Flock deserves recognition for its solidity, or at least a watch. trust me, its a hell of a lot more thoughtful and entertaining than 99% of the garbage that continues to get released on a daily basis.

So there you are, in a car, driving after a guy who is running down a back-street and who has just been doing nasty things to a girl who was tied up by her wrists to a wall. You really, really, want to catch this guy 'cause he's a mean bugger. So you're driving and he's running, and as you get close to him he has the cheek to pick up a rubbish bin - you know, one of the small metal "trash cans' that you see in every back-street.

So when this desperado throws the trash can at your car, what do you do?

I'll tell you what I would do. I'd keep going straight and run the bugger down! But what does Richard Gere do? He's turns sharp left and crashes into a pile of rubbish, gets out of his car and lets the guy get away.

Who the hell wrote that piece of this pathetic script? Too unbelievable. I guess that's why I've never heard of this film.

Please try to choose better scripts, Mr Gere. You're a great actor - you just need to be more picky.

The paranoid registrant administrator of the Department of Public Safety Erroll Babbage (Richard Gere) is forced to an early retirement due to his abusive behavior against the sex offenders that he should monitor, and shall spend his last eighteen days training his replacement Allison Lowry (Claire Danes). When the seventeen years old Harriet Wells (Kristina Sisco) is considered missing in his area of work, Errol is convinced that her disappearance is related to one of his parole sex offenders. However, his superiors do not believe on his investigations and he convinces Allison to follow him in the sick underworld of pornography and perversions trying to find the missing girl.

"The Flock" is a movie with unpleasant and bigoted story and characters with a good and dark cinematography but terrible edition and camera work. The ambiguous character of Richard Gere has a despicable behavior in spite of solving the case, and it is impossible to feel any empathy for him. In the beginning, there are statistics about the theme "sex offenders", and I do not know whether they are realistic or generated by a North American obsession that considers a sexual offense or harassment certain attitudes accepted by other societies. This film seems to be intended to spread a sort of concern and prejudice against those that have been condemned but paid their debt with the society, since they have been released on probation by the justice. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Justiça a Qualquer Preço" ("Justice at any Price")