Review – Internal Affairs

An hour or so in, I had to back up to the opening credits to see if Joe Eszterhas wrote the screenplay. He didn’t, but he might as well have. This is an endless parade of the kind of mindless violence, brutal sex and half-baked dialogue that made him famous. Richard Gere stars as a crooked cop under investigation by the LAPD’s internal affairs division. By the end – actually sometime before the end – Gere’s character’s behavior becomes so completely outlandish that he seems merely to be trying to commit suicide by forcing the investigator on his trail (Andy Garcia) to kill him. As usual with movies like this, the payoff at the end is vastly inadequate considering how much misery and death the villain inflicts before getting his come-uppance. Wish I’d skipped it