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.

This is one of those movies that must be included on the list of "potential movies that you have a total dislike just by watching the first five minutes". And I watched the whole thing! The plot could have be interesting but it was almost a rip-off of "The Pledge" where you have a disturbed police officer fighting his own demons to fulfill a promise of catching a rapist of a child. But many things in "The Flock" were over used, over played, laughable and pathetic just to name a few adjectives. Richard Gere is a federal agent in constant vigilance of paroled sex offenders and he's on the trail of a missing girl probably kidnapped by a known suspect of his list. He's been forced to get a retirement because of his bad behavior and in his last case he must train a female young officer to take his place (played by Claire Danes). To make things hard to his partner he's a difficult guy to be with, he doesn't know how to sustain a conversation, and he's always taking care of the case, barely talks about his private life (if he has one except that he beats all the sex offenders he knows).Why this movie didn't worked well? There was nothing thrilling about it, nothing shocking or even interesting to see. There's a statement in the beginning of the film quoting the numbers of cases in U.S. about how many women are sexually assaulted in matters of minutes and it seems to me (at that point) that the movie would follow a strong denounce on that, a warning sign to representants of governments about what's happening or a complain about the lack of efficient police services or something similar. It turns out to be a road to nowhere with awkward situations such as when Gere's character loses his mind to the point of beating up a guy in a restaurant just because he was kissing passionately his own girlfriend. That happened after Claire Danes told him about many clues of the case they were working. Most laughable moment ever in the film. Gere is quite alright in the film, but Claire Danes once again added nothing to her filmography and to the part she was playing. Weird and crying faces were just to silly to show all her skills of playing a good agent with a traumatic past (Clarice Starling's syndrome appears here again). Worst than her performance was the editing and the photography. Remember when I said about the first bad minutes of this film? It's all because of the crazy editing with some annoying stylistic thriller rhythm; and the terrible cinematography with some pitiful effects trying to create an atmosphere of disturbing things, too many unnecessary cuts and voice overs, everything out of order.Everything here is repetitive, boring and you're gonna fall asleep towards the ending. I don't recommend! 3/10

The Flock starts as Department of Public Safety official Erroll Babbage (Richard Gere) has just eighteen days left until he retires, Erroll's job is to keep track of paroled sex offenders & rapists who he calls his 'flock'. Erroll is introduced to Allison Lowry (Claire Danes) his replacement, it's up to Errol to show Allison in eighteen days what has taken him eighteen years to learn. While scanning the local newspapers Erroll spots that a seventeen year old girl named Harriet Wells (Kristina Sisco) has been abducted, for somewhat random reasons Erroll suspects that one of his 'flock' may be responsible for the abduction & uses his last eighteen days to try & save the life of Harriet before she ends up just another victim...Produced & directed by Wai-kenung Lau under the pseudonym Andrew Lau this crappy serial killer thriller had a turbulent production, after filming Lau was fired by the studio & producers who then made their own cut of the film which was released across Europe & was the one I saw & thus will be basing my comments on. Then Niels Mueller was brought in to direct some uncredited re-shoots & an entirely different cut of the film was put together, the European cut is about ten minutes longer & the two are edited differently with scenes appearing in different order & both version lose & gain footage over the other. Anyway, while I can't really comment on the US version I pretty much hated the European cut, the whole film is an absolute mess from start to finish. The plot is awful, I guess the makers were going for an edgy serial killer thriller like Se7en (1995) or The Silence of the Lambs (1991) with a race against time to track down a killer & save a life or two. The character's are awful, I think we are meant to empathise with Erroll but he comes across as a lifeless shell while Allison just doesn't have the grit needed for such a tough job. The investigation aspect of The Flock is strictly routine, the script feels like a cheap throwaway TV cop drama with no real twists or surprises & little to no dramatic impact as there's lots of talking, self pitying & turmoil but the script forgets to deliver anything gripping or engaging & I really did hate The Flock as a film. The European cut runs over 100 minutes which is far to long for such a crap film, we never see the the victim Harriet before the end so we never feel sorry for her & strangely we only ever see her parents once very briefly so the parental loss angle is also wasted. There are so many problems with The Flock it's just not funny, why did that guy set is Dog on Erroll? Why not just kill the guy? Would pointing a loaded gun at your partners head & threatening to kill her really make her trust you & risk her life & career for you? How did that black guy at the end know where Harriet was? A frustrating nothing sort of ending that is neither here nor there just rounds things off badly & left me totally unsatisfied. If you like great cop serial killer crime films then give The Flock a miss.The most startling part of The Flock is the text that begins the film, it says that there are over half a million registered sex offenders in the US & for every thousand offenders there is only one caseworker that monitors them which is sort of scary when you think about it. The violence & gore are minimal, a few people are beaten up, there are some photos of severed limbs & a couple of mouldy dead bodies but nothing else. Another big difference between the two different versions is that the European one has that really awful machine gun editing, fades, white-outs & strange editing while the US one is far more straight forward apparently & tones down the annoying attempts at style. The whole film has a somewhat desaturated look & the there's not much colour here.The IMDb says that The Flock had a budget of about $35,000,000 which amazes me, where did all the money go? Next to nothing happens. Filmed in New Mexico. I can't believe the cast in this, Richard Gere looks lost, Claie Danes is miscast & is just an observer 90% of the time while pop star Avril Lavign hasn't been in a film since this was says it all.The Flock is a terrible serial killer thriller with no twists or surprises & the level of investigation is as basic as they come, a really unsatisfying, annoyingly made mess of a film. I am not sure if the US version is any better but it sure can't be any worse, can it?

I caught this movie late at night on cable, and I was pleasantly surprised. I can only imagine the reason this movie was not better known, is because the subject matter is very disturbing. But if you can handle the sexual abuse topic, it is a well acted, suspenseful and very interesting movie. Both Richard Gere and Claire Daines are very good in it. And although the subject matter is not for the faint of heart, the movie doesn't go out of its way to be brutal either (like 8mm for instance).I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys serial killer and suspense type movies.