i must have seen a different film!!

Don't listen to the negative reviews

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Despite that this should be by now ordinary to me, I continually become amazed when the mainstream American movie industry panders with amazingly clinging loyalty to the the American public their tendency to fanaticize and obsess over the obscene. To translate...When discussing the grotesque and the macabre, abuse, torture and destruction of human life, we become most fascinated when such things are done in a bizarre fashion. Of course, it only profits to connect the dots of this fascination to the fetishists. I can't specify enough not only how incorrect, but how harmful this is.I understand how disgusting the American public must find the idea of S/M, BDSM, and Fetishism. That being said, it is blissfully unaware of the simple difference between people who consensually engage in such acts and those individuals that enjoy abusing victims without any permission to do so. It sounds so simple, yet is so essential - at every moment in the movie the berated and obsessed yet righteous agent "uncovers" how his hapless clients like to abuse and sometimes kill women. The fetishists are intermingled with men who mutilate, rape, and kill women. This is beyond cheap - this is discrimination.There is a large difference between a woman who wants to be bound and whipped and a man who is doing this to her, and a man who likes to do this to women who don't want it. Sadism is a term misused - there is a DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ODD SEXUAL ACTS AND ABUSIVE CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR. This movie is an insult to the first amendment rights of every American citizen. That being said, this movie breeds ignorance of this. People who engage in S/M are not child molesters and rapists. Sometimes molesters and rapists may like some of the S/M pornographic material. However, there are many individuals who engage in S/M, and they have no prior abuse records, no troubled childhoods, and have no intention to harm anyone who doesn't specifically request and agree to it. Yes, masochists find sadists, indeed, need sadists, as the other half of their happy perverse existence. Neither breaks the law. Particularly annoying was when the agent had a consensual couple in public this time, leaving it very difficult for him to go on his violent paranoid rant, so he chose to annoy and harass them instead, who basically told him to go and sit on it. So, basically, according to this movie, any abnormal sexual behavior will be persecuted by the state. What I'd like to know is, what is the point of this people's jobs? And what are they saying about our rights?

I saw this on a premium channel with Marie as we were pet-sitting in Brooklyn.Richard Gere is Erroll Babbage, a soon to retire city employee. He has a replacement to train, Claire Danes as Allison Lowry. I like both Gere and Danes, so it was entertaining to see them. However I found the actual story depicted to be very marginal, and hardly worth the time to watch it.The central story involves a serial killer, and part of his or her crime scene signature are the body parts, all cut up. There is a scene where lots of body parts are discovered, and I found it poor movie-making.There is a missing young lady and they fear she may become the next fatality. So the story involves looking for clues and finding her while she is still alive.A note of interest, singer Avril Lavigne has a small role as Beatrice Bell.

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.

A worker responsible for monitoring sex offenders is close to retirement after years in the job; what he has experienced puts him on the brink of insanity, perhaps into the abyss of madness when for his last case he goes in search of a missing teenage girl. That is the central tale of this movie and the lead actor does superbly in his role with an equally impressive performance from the actress playing the rookie he is training to take over his position.However this film is more or less ruined by two things:1. The massively irritating and quirky way the film is directed and presented which dilutes and in effect destroys the first rate acting of the leads and obscures the story considerably. Hence a prime example of how the ego/interference of a director etc spoils an otherwise good show.Furthermore, the other negative,2. As indeed another reviewer noted: the picture appears to be an attempted copy in many respects of X-Files('X files without the X') right down to the similarity to the two "stars" of that show being in effect cloned into this film. Therefore what otherwise might have received a 7 or even an 8 from me is reduced by several grades due to the fatal flaws herein outlined.5/10.