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.)
