‘Internal Affairs,’ a cop corruption thriller full of mind games, turns 35

Richard Gere and Andy Garcia squared off as cops on different sides of the law in Mike Figgis’ 1990 thriller.

The early 1990s were full of films about cops on the edge, and one of the more unique of the genre was Internal Affairs. The film, directed by Mike Figgis, arrived in January of 1990, in the opening weeks of the ‘90s, and 35 years ago this week.

When you hear a film with this premise — an L.A. County cop who’s wildly, cartoonishly corrupt, and manipulating a younger colleague — one thinks of Training Day, which arrived a little more than a decade later. It also recalls the mid-2000s TV series The Shield, although it never gets quite that extreme.

But while Denzel Washington, in his Oscar-winning turn in that film, brought a nasty swagger, Richard Gere plays the bad guy here much differently, and Gere playing a guy this evil takes some getting used to. He’s more about mind games and mental manipulation, more of a cerebral assassin, not that he isn’t also a regular assassin.

Sure, there’s a lot in the film that looks very dated today, especially the music and haircuts. But the film, written by Henry Bean, is a lot less ridiculous, to modern eyes, when it comes to the plot.

The film stars Gere as Dennis Peck, a “supercop” who “doesn’t play by the rules,” meaning he robs drug dealers and isn’t above the occasional murder-for-hire. This is to say nothing of his voluminous number of ex-wives and out-of-wedlock children, enough to require a lot of corruption for him to afford.

Andy Garcia is the other lead, playing Raymond Avilla, a newly minted Internal Affairs cop who’s soon investigating Peck; his partner is played by Laurie Metcalf. Michael Beach — still playing a cop all these years later on Law & Order — has a small role as an officer who kills someone at the beginning.