Internal Affairs: Shockingly Great, Time After Time

A great movie is a series of shocks.  Some minor.  Some 220 volts.  All of them leave you uneasy. Internal Affairs has dozens of small shocks and at least five really big ones.  191 Movies is dedicated to no spoilers, you'll just have to watch the film again.  But after seeing it (for at least the 50th time) the other day, we realized that it's always better to shock an audience in a low-key way.  Like when an actor does something unexpected and makes it work.  You're not manipulated.  You simply get sucked in - and you keep watching. From the get-go, Dennis Peck, the Richard Gere character, shocks you.  The question you keep asking yourself is: how far will this guy go?  The answer is, way, way further than you think possible.  What makes his performance so astonishing is that it's so quiet.  Right away, you understand who Dennis Peck is as a man, a police officer, a father - and many other things.  And you know he'll never stop upping the ante.  Even after you know the whole movie - you watch it again just to see how far he'll go.  Everybody else is good, including Andy Garcia, Laurie Metcalf, Nancy Travis and Billy Baldwin - maybe even better than they've been before or since.  No small feat by the great director Mike Figgis.