Internal Affairs (1990)

Director: Mike Figgis

Cast: Richard Gere, Andy Garcia, Nancy Travis, Laurie Metcalf, William Baldwin

Stars: 2

Have you ever watched a movie and when the credits rolled you thought to yourself “what a damn good movie!?” You were engaged from the beginning of the movie, not only in the storyline, but the action and characters too. And when it was all over, you didn't even realize that you had just spent two hours in front of the TV. For weeks afterwards you talk about the movie to all your friends exclaiming how good it is. Well, Internal Affairs is not that kind of movie.

The plot is simple, familiar, and predictable. Raymond Avila (Garcia) begins his first day in the Internal Affairs Division of the Los Angeles Police Department, and is paired with Amy Wallace (Metcalf) as his new partner. Their first assignment together is to investigate a complaint on an officer, Van Stretch (Baldwin). And guess what? It just so happens that Stretch and Avila were old friends from the academy. Soon their investigation leads them to believe that Stretch's problems go deeper than just emotional stresses, and that his partner, Dennis Peck (Gere), has been bribing and abusing his power as a police officer for years. They begin trying to gather evidence and gain information on Peck's activities and Peck begins to fire back when he realizes what the IA agents are doing. This is when the movie spins out of control.

From here on out it seems to be more of a bad soap opera than a movie. Peck is a senior officer on the force and has been able to do whatever he wants; bribing, "hits," running rackets, and numerous other escapades. He begins to involve Avila's wife (Travis) in order to get back at Avila, and Peck also begins to sleep with almost every woman in the movie, as he continues to attempt to stop Avila from investigating him.

The largest problem with the movie is its very poor storyline. It tends to be a familiar and predictable one. It was no surprise when people died, nor was the conclusion any better. The entire movie seemed to build to the final scene, which was an ultimate let down. There was very little character development, and in a movie with such a lackluster story character development is essential. By the last twenty minutes I found myself not caring where this movie was going.

Overall, it was a long movie that led to a predictable end. I leave this review wondering how the hell this made it onto the 1000 greatest movies list. Then again, it got 88% favorable reviews on Rottentomatoes.com, so what do I know?