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A REVIEW BY BOB SINCLAR 10/11/2003
If there's one thing I can't stand it's to have some stupid ass summer-filmmaker trying to give me a lesson of moral. The movie business must be such a moral business... they can't keep it for themselves they have to share the wealth. Yeah right!
Anyway... Instinct is the story of a young and amazingly talented psychiatrist (Cuba) who happens to work on the case of a lifetime. Learn what happened to a even more amazingly talented anthropologist (Hopkins) who after living with gorillas came back to the world as a killer. Cuba succeeds to communicate with Hopkins and they soon develop a mutual respect. Only we don’t give a shit about it like we did with Jodie Foster.
At this point the shrink’s objective changes from writing an evaluation on the anthropologist to proving him innocent and getting him out of jail. He finally writes a book about it and its adaptation for the big screen apparently.
By the way... If this young shrink wasn't talented all that much and if he had only a little sorry ass case in his agenda, I suspect, there wouldn't really be a strong need to make a movie about it. Especially not a summer movie with 2 expensive stars in it. So what I really wanna say here is that we are quite aware that this might be an out of the ordinary story featuring out of the ordinary people. I don’t understand why then, insist so much during the introduction on proving how great and brilliant this little psychiatrist is, and how successful he is going to be by the time the movie ends. This isn’t a Tom Cruise movie, is it?
Anyway his task is to find out what made an even more brilliant anthropologist (Hopkins) turn into a wild animal with mass-murdering tendencies while he disappeared living in the wilderness for several minutes of movie time. The disappearance in the jungle part being poorly directed (like shit actually) you don’t truly get any idea about the incredible experience the anthropologist might have had. It feels like one day of shooting at the fucking zoo.
The makers of the film find it smart to emphasis the dangerous-killer aspect of Hopkins during the intro once again. The point to that is; it will eventually help you believe that Hopkins’ character might be somewhat dangerous. You can feel the guy definitely is no Hannibal Lecter.
While I’m at it, I wish some studios would quit using false advertisement.‘’What are you up to ? therapy ?’’ that line was probably not in the original script. It might be the only good one in the film all right... but it has nothing to do in there. The marketing fucks... hummm, excuse me, folks, needed it to put in the film trailers. I don't like when I feel I've been the victim of movie marketing... it makes me mad.
Of course, this is what everybody want to see, Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter one more time. With only that line, Hopkins turns for a minute his empty and totally unfrightening anthropologist character into Lecter... it sure sounds great. Anyway you’d think, it would seem obvious at first that what would turn Hopkins into a wild animal would be living in the wild african jungle somewhere with wild space monkeys where they don't even have a TV set to change them into very ‘civilized’ Jerry Springer watchers.
Well everything isn't what it seems and the wilderness is only wild for outsiders. That is the first bullshit we are told. Okay, Isn’t that obvious? We wouldn’t realize that we’re wild if we were living in the wilderness ourselves, would we? Unless someone makes us notice « hey dude you’re in the wilderness ». So well, according to the film, wilderness is the most peaceful and balanced place to live in on earth. Its inhabitants (animals monkeys mostly) live in complete harmony with their surrounding environment as we are told. Pretty much the happiest place on earth it seems, too bad it’s so fucking boring. The real "happiest place on earth" is much more entertaining and you get to meet as many monkeys and even donkeys in there.
Ok, I’m losing the point... Basically, the director makes everything look boring. Like if it wasn't enough, at this point in the film, a little philosopher comes in from nowhere to finish up the lousy screenplay and bores us stiff with a bunch of banalities until the end of the film. We humans are the ones who have evolved badly. Maybe we shouldn’t have evolved at all. Ok, so basically we get one more time this summer the thing where they tell us about the human race being the virus of planet earth etc.
We should be ashamed of ourselves by now maybe. Not only we destroy nature and we destroy each other but we go see movies about it to entertain ourselves. Who knows, if gorillas were to make a movie, that they wouldn’t make a movie about kicking some other monkeys’ ass. We are takers as Hopkins wisely says (he just sounds wise when he says it). Right... most humans beings from the movie biz are takers maybe. How about the rest of us?
The human-virus concept seems to make sense though it was put in a much more effective yet schemer way in the matrix. With simply a couple of lines from the coolest talking character in the Matrix you get a much greater impact than with 2 hours of Instinct. I know I’ve done it... I gave away the whole surprise message of instinct. Don’t worry, you could still find a few excuses to see instinct ; unfortunately I can’t think about any of them at this time. One thing is, you could be very much surprised to find out what turned such a brave anthropologist into a murderer... only that would be if it was another film. A clever one. Cause here the answer is in the title of the film.
I assure you there is not much to be surprised about in instinct except maybe the fairly bad performance by Cuba Gooding Jr. While Anthony Hopkins has a lot of class and a very subtle acting, Cuba is just the opposite. He pretty much overacts all the time. The best example being one of the last scenes in which he express his true love for Hopkins. If nobody was there to stop him on the set, he would would do a triple loop before dropping on his knees and crying out loud the rest of the dialogue... basically, you would believe him if he was in a cartoon. The rest of the movie Cuba strives to show us the different dramatic expressions on his face... only he doesn't have any. He never really looks serious at all. He looks more like a guy who’s having a good time being a star in a summer film. The only way you can tell he’s supposed to play a serious character is by the way he is not jumping around everywhere as he does usually. Oddly, I didn’t seem to give a shit about it... and I sort of enjoyed watching Cuba having fun. He is the kind of guy who’s so cool on screen, you’d almost think he is a great actor.
Other than that, most of the film takes place in a jail for mentally challenged criminals. Besides the fact that none of the inmates actually looked like criminals, I didn’t quite understand why they would pick on Sigourney Weaver... at least she was in a good gorilla movie. Who’s laughing now? Also I couldn’t help myself and kept making a comparison with One flew over the cuckoo’s nest in my mind. At least now I can warn you. Remember not to do the comparison if you happen to see Instinct. That would be insulting for One flew over the cuckoo's nest.
Maura Tierney (from Newsradio) plays Hopkins’ daughter in the movie. Her apartment in the movie makes a good excuse for another set. So the filmmaker can switch to it once in a while when they get bored with the jail location. Apart from that I didn’t find any use for her character in the story. Apparently she wouldn’t even sleep with a black man and she was humorously and involuntary clear about it in one of the latest scenes.
The rest of the film was shot with pet gorillas somewhere in a african looking studio. The film is totally not stunning visually thanks to Johnny Turtletaub (we'll see him again in 15 years directing the CBS Sunday movie original). It simply rests on two academy award USDA first choice actors and summer movie marketing to attract the audience.
Fortunately Anthony Hopkins and Cuba Gooding Jr. can be fairly entertaining whatever they do. The monkeys who made this film can go back up their tree, and gather their thoughts. Let’s hope that next time they will have something relevant to tell us. If you don’t already know that it is bad to shoot a innocent nonunion monkey worker in the face you can learn something watching this film, otherwise I’d pass on this one. There’s a lot of good stuff to see this summer. You don’t want to mess up the good impression.
© 2003 Tom H
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