Plot
This film is about a hyper-vigilant employee of the department of public safety who, while training his young female replacement, has to track down a missing girl who he is convinced is connected to a paroled sex offender he is investigating.
Release Year: 2007
Rating: 5.7/10 (6,653 voted)
Director:
Wai-keung Lau
Stars: Richard Gere, Claire Danes, KaDee Strickland
Storyline The paranoid registrant administrator of the Department of Public Safety Erroll Babbage is forced to an early retirement due to his abusive behavior against the sex offenders that he should monitor, and shall spend his last eighteen days training his replacement Allison Lowry. When the seventeen years old Harriet Wells is considered missing in his area of work, Errol is convinced that her disappearance is related to one of his parole sex offenders. However, his superiors do not believe on his investigations and he convinces Allison to follow him in the sick underworld of pornography and perversions trying to find the missing girl.
Writers: Hans Bauer, Craig Mitchell
Cast: Richard Gere
-
Errol Babbage
Claire Danes
-
Allison Lowry
KaDee Strickland
-
Viola Frye
Ray Wise
-
Bobby Stiles
Russell Sams
-
Edmund Grooms
Avril Lavigne
-
Beatrice Bell
Kristina Sisco
-
Harriet Wells
Dwayne L. Barnes
-
Vincent Dennison
(as Dwayne Barnes)
Matt Schulze
-
Glenn Custis
Debrianna Mansini
-
Harriet's Mother
Ed Ackerman
-
Louis Kessler
French Stewart
-
Haynes Ownby
Paul Scallan
-
Missing Girl's Father
Susan Conklin
-
Missing Girl's Mother
Carmen Serano
-
Woman in Gorilla Suit
Taglines:
To kill accusations, you must go with the flock. (UK Tagline)
Opening Weekend: BRL 435,424
(Brazil)
(14 October 2007)
(81 Screens)
Gross: $5,359,167
(Non-USA)
Technical Specs
Runtime:|
Canada:
|
USA:
Goofs:
Revealing mistakes:
Harriet Wells has been kidnapped for a enough time to have hairy armpits. However, in every scene of her tied in bed, she looks dirty and even bloody but her armpits appear perfectly shaved.
Quotes:
[first lines]
Erroll Babbage:
Hey!
User Review
Better than they say. Hell, better than "8 MM" too.
Rating: 6/10
I have just seen this movie. It just opened today (November 9th 2007)
in Spain. Let me say that I understand the bad word of mouth the movie
is having, it deals with a difficult subject (sexual abusers) and its
tone is as dark as say "9 MM", if not darker.
But all things considered it's a pretty good film. The investigation
angle makes for a very tense thriller, but where the film really shines
is in the depiction of Richard Gere's characters, as well as the
villain's, which I won't reveal.
Gere is really all stops go here, it's easily his most intense role
since "Internal Affairs". Even if you are not Gere fans, you're gonna
love him in this.
On the minus side, I didn't like the way the film is edited. It's full
of flashes, freeze frames and all those "arty" stuff they cram into
your TV series and direct-to-DVD movies. I understand they wanted to
give the movie a hard edge, but it's often too distracting. The film is
already dark and gritty enough as it is, and this bells and whistles
don't add a damn thing.
And then there's Claire Danes. look, she's an OK actress, but she was
like a fish out of water here. They give her character some interesting
background, but she's constantly out off key. She looks like a raving
lunatic when she tries to act quirky or vulnerable, and not very
convincing when the script calls for her character to toughen up a
little.
So, it's an interesting movie if you can go beyond the surface of its
visual trickery, but not as good as it could be. I would say it earns a
6'5 - 7 in my scale.
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