The Flock

The Flock (2007) is a crime thriller you can watch online on iFILM, starring Richard Gere alongside Claire Danes and directed by Hong Kong filmmaker Andrew Lau. Erroll Babbage has spent eighteen years as a parole officer tracking registered sex offenders. He has eighteen days left before retirement.

When one of his parolees drops off the monitoring grid at the same time a teenage girl goes missing, Erroll drags his new partner Ranie Beckett (Danes) into the investigation before she's remotely ready for what it involves. The search runs through S&M clubs, private collections, and the edges of the criminal world that parole boards officially pretend don't exist. Erroll's methods are barely legal. Ranie is trying to learn a job while surviving the teacher.

Gere plays the character against type — worn down, abrasive, and professionally warped by two decades of looking at the worst cases — and it's his best mode in this film. The pacing is deliberate and the subject matter is unpleasant by design; this is a thriller that sits with the ugliness rather than rushing past it. Stream The Flock (2007) online on iFILM.