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.

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.

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.

Gere and Danes star as 2 workers for the department of public safety who keep track of released sex offenders. Gere, who plays Babbage, refers to them as his flock. Gere is an over obsessed vigilante whom is on his way out. He is training, new comer Allison, to take over his job. Gere sees his flock as very sick, disturbed puppies. He asks them questions that are not on the list, and tries to act like the police and solve crimes. He keeps getting warned for this behavior, hence the reason he is being replaced. During his final few days on the job, a young girl goes missing, and Babbage is sure it is one of his flock whom has gone astray. Him and Allison narrow a list down and discover some of the offenders have gone AWOL. So, he decides that he needs to track the missing girl down rather than help the police. That part is a little far fetched.There is some sick, twisted stuff shown in this film. Like when Babbage and Allison go to this building where a bunch of sick people do disturbing things to each other. Also, there are the people who kidnapped the girl. At the end of the film, we see what sick freaks they are. However, I wouldn't call this movie excessive because not really much is shown on film.FINAL VERDICT: If you like thrillers and films about serial killers and cops chasing killers, then you will like this.