Internal Affairs [1990] [DVD]

Mike Figgis' Internal Affairs makes great play with some fairly obvious ironies--"Trust me, I'm a cop", Richard Gere says to a couple for whom he is arranging the death of their parents--but its real strength lies in a cluster of central performances. Gere has rarely been better than he is as the charismatic, self-righteous entirely corrupt and corrupting Dennis Peck, but Andy Garcia is at least as impressive as the "selfish yuppy bastard", the ambitious Internal Affairs cop Avila whose determination to bring Peck down is as much to do with massaging his own ego as with fighting the good fight, particularly after Peck starts making moves on Avila's gallery curator wife. This is a film about men destructively manipulating each other's self-love--the two men have more in common than they like to admit, a point sardonically made by Amy, the world-weary lesbian cop who is Avila's partner (an impressive performance by Figgis regular Laurie Metcalfe). Internal Affairs was the best thriller of 1990 and one of the decade's best. --Roz Kaveney