Instinct
2/4
Starring: Cuba Gooding, Jr., Anthony Hopkins, Donald Sutherland, Maura Tierney, John Ashton, George Dzundza
Rated R for Some Intense Violent Behavior
Sometimes the choice of a director can tank a film. Take "Die Another Day," Lee Tamahori's Bond entry. It was so bad that it sent Hollywood's longest running franchise into turnaround. While it's unfair to lay the blame of "Instinct's" inadequacies solely at the feet of Jon Turteltaub (script problems are ever present too), a lot of it is because Turteltaub, known previously (and after) for kid's movies like "3 Ninjas" and "While You Were Sleeping." This is not the kind of pedigree one needs for an emotionally charged psychological drama/thriller. Instead of the thematically complex and provocative film I was hoping for, I ended up with a shallow, occasionally preposterous and frequently overblown misfire.
Theo Caulder (Gooding, Jr.) is a psychiatrist on his way up. His mentor, Ben Hillard (Sutherland), is looking for someone to assess an anthropologist from their university who went native and killed two men. Theo, sensing career advancement and a book deal, he asks for the case. It's a tough case, since the scientist, Dr. Ethan Powell (Hopkins), hasn't spoken a word in two years. But eventually Theo gets through, and Powell begins to open up about what drove him into the wild and why he committed a double murder with a club.
Needless to say, the strongest scenes are those between Theo and Powell. The film is built around them, and while both Gooding, Jr. and Hopkins do fine work, they're often at odds with lame dialogue about loopy psychobabble.
Where the film runs into real trouble is when Theo tries to clean up the area of the prison that houses the mentally ill. It's overseen by brutal guards, especially a nasty piece of work named Dacks (Ashton), and an overworked psychiatrist (Dzundza). This stuff is rarely credible, and is on more than one occasion so overblown it goes beyond self-parody. Not kidding.
What keeps this movie from being unwatchable are the performances. Both actors do what they can with the meager material they have been given. Apart from his Oscar-winning performance in "Jerry Maguire," Cuba Gooding, Jr. hasn't had much of a career (considering his career is mainly direct-to-DVD movies, methinks he needs a new agent). Gooding Jr. is usually solid, although when it comes to heavy emotion or when he's playing the egotistic doctor in the film's early scenes, he's not credible. Anthony Hopkins doesn't appear to be trying very hard, but with Hopkins, he can make magic simply by appearing on film. Maura Tierney is also good, although this isn't her finest hour (due mostly to the lack of good material). Donald Sutherland is wasted.
Considering its flaws, "Instinct" is better than it had a right to be. But that doesn't mean that you should see it.
Starring: Cuba Gooding, Jr., Anthony Hopkins, Donald Sutherland, Maura Tierney, John Ashton, George Dzundza
Rated R for Some Intense Violent Behavior
Sometimes the choice of a director can tank a film. Take "Die Another Day," Lee Tamahori's Bond entry. It was so bad that it sent Hollywood's longest running franchise into turnaround. While it's unfair to lay the blame of "Instinct's" inadequacies solely at the feet of Jon Turteltaub (script problems are ever present too), a lot of it is because Turteltaub, known previously (and after) for kid's movies like "3 Ninjas" and "While You Were Sleeping." This is not the kind of pedigree one needs for an emotionally charged psychological drama/thriller. Instead of the thematically complex and provocative film I was hoping for, I ended up with a shallow, occasionally preposterous and frequently overblown misfire.
Theo Caulder (Gooding, Jr.) is a psychiatrist on his way up. His mentor, Ben Hillard (Sutherland), is looking for someone to assess an anthropologist from their university who went native and killed two men. Theo, sensing career advancement and a book deal, he asks for the case. It's a tough case, since the scientist, Dr. Ethan Powell (Hopkins), hasn't spoken a word in two years. But eventually Theo gets through, and Powell begins to open up about what drove him into the wild and why he committed a double murder with a club.
Needless to say, the strongest scenes are those between Theo and Powell. The film is built around them, and while both Gooding, Jr. and Hopkins do fine work, they're often at odds with lame dialogue about loopy psychobabble.
Where the film runs into real trouble is when Theo tries to clean up the area of the prison that houses the mentally ill. It's overseen by brutal guards, especially a nasty piece of work named Dacks (Ashton), and an overworked psychiatrist (Dzundza). This stuff is rarely credible, and is on more than one occasion so overblown it goes beyond self-parody. Not kidding.
What keeps this movie from being unwatchable are the performances. Both actors do what they can with the meager material they have been given. Apart from his Oscar-winning performance in "Jerry Maguire," Cuba Gooding, Jr. hasn't had much of a career (considering his career is mainly direct-to-DVD movies, methinks he needs a new agent). Gooding Jr. is usually solid, although when it comes to heavy emotion or when he's playing the egotistic doctor in the film's early scenes, he's not credible. Anthony Hopkins doesn't appear to be trying very hard, but with Hopkins, he can make magic simply by appearing on film. Maura Tierney is also good, although this isn't her finest hour (due mostly to the lack of good material). Donald Sutherland is wasted.
Considering its flaws, "Instinct" is better than it had a right to be. But that doesn't mean that you should see it.
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