This egregious sustentation is found foremost in the person of the default protagonist, Babbage. He’s a self-appointed enforcer of justice, a gate-keeping vigilante to be sure, as bad, or worse, than the malefactors he’s charged with keeping tabs on. Babbage breaks into residences to perform illegal searches, openly carries a gun against Department policy, and — in conduct that would make "Dirty" Harry Callahan wince in disapproval — by night leads a secret life in which he dons a ski mask and violently attacks miscreants based on their potential to commit future crimes (“We’re fortune tellers”). This unchecked conduct ridiculously culminates with Babbage and Lowry bursting into a sex offenders meeting firing his revolver into floor and walls, demanding at point-blank range the whereabouts of the abducted girl. Your unnamed city’s municipal tax dollars at work.
As preposterous as all this sounds, Gere breezes through the garbage - human and otherwise - with a begrudging Teflon deftness. This despite the fact that we know nothing of Babbage’s personal life. Wife, kids, friends, parents, not so much as a neighbor - dead or living, current or former - are present, or accounted for. Gere either believes in this material more than he has any right to, or he’s even more skilled an actor than we knew. Either way, his unabashedness belies the dispirited material. The gaping script holes don’t lend themselves to understanding Babbage’s motivations, garner the slightest iota of sympathy for him, or make you wonder why you’ve never heard of The Flock.
Article comments
1 - miki
excellent review of a very creepy movie. the movie was filmed in Albuquerque New Mexico.
I wouldn't recommend it.
2 - Jen
I strongly agree with you, "The Flock wallows in the very mire of human perversion that it sluggishly tries to convince us its rising above. The irony being that its tenuous existence perpetuates artistic perversion." I watched 30 minutes of this movie and felt like I was going to vomit. What were they thinking?!?!?