Instinct (R) 1/2 * Starring Anthony Hopkins, Cuba Gooding Jr. Directed by John Turtleltaub Year Released: 1999 A Review by Frankie Paiva
There are some actors that you just look at and will automatically see them as the famous character they play. Fran Drescher will forever will the Nanny, Bob Denver will always be Gilligan, and Don Knotts lives forever as Barney Fife. All these people are television actors who appear on their show, week after week playing the same character, so it is hard for this to translate into celebrities who appear in movies. Anthony Hopkins on the other hand apparently wants us to always think of him as a crazed madman behind bars. This is the only reason I could come up with for him to take the leading role in Instinct, a new movie that re-defines cliched and painful. It does not matter if the prison inmates are tough praying on the few weak ones, or that the guards give new meaning to police brutality. You could probably withstand all of the above material on a good bucket of popcorn and a very large soda. But the movie can't even be even fun and smart on a summer movie level, and fails miserably to make us excited or scared in any way.
Dr. Theo Calder is a young psychologist who is very high in the areas of self-confidence and self-assurance. He wants to begin seeing a crazed scientist who recently was transported from a prison in Africa to one in the states. Ethan Powell (Hopkins, playing the role of Hannibal Lecter’s non-cannibal cousin) was a scientist who disappeared in the forests of Africa in 1994. He lived in the forest with the gorillas he studies for two years before killing two park rangers and injuring two more while trying to protect his gorilla family. In the first interview Theo learns some problems that may hinder the investigation of Ethan. One, he doesn't speak to anyone at all. Two, he hasn't experienced human interaction in so long he responds to almost everything with violent outbursts. Three, the doctors at the prison just don't care. How dramatic, how thrilling, how (inserting snoring sounds here).
Eventually he does get the man to finally utter a few words, but the psychiatrist soon finds himself to be the one who’s being taught a lesson. There’s some message about how no human actually has control, they just think they do, that is what Powell teaches him. Dr. Calder soon expands his horizons as a realizes that is may not be the people in the prison, but the prison itself. The problems with the inmates must live with are guards that are not fair to them and treat them with harshly and violently. Plus, oh my God! everyone in the prison is not being treated with proper respect.
OK, let us take a poll: Who would ever really care about what happens to any of the people in this movie? See it and if you don’t come out disgusted then I will personally pay for your next outing to the cinema. (NOTE: The preceding sentence was just to prove a point that this movie is bad, I will not pay for your next movie so don’t e-mail me asking for money.) The acting in the film is just horrible. Hopkins does nothing in the role that he is accustomed to, and Cuba has some keen intellectual ability to pick bad roles that will make him lose his star status. This is not entirely the actor’s faults though. The script could easily have been written better if the proper time was taken with it. The soapy emotion that floats up near the end of the film also doesn’t make any sense with all of the happenings in the beginning of the picture. The setting is uninteresting and the story has too many side plots that they do nothing with which just seem to be there to add to the running time. You could rip up all of the copies (with gloves on so as not to burn your fingers) of this movie at your local video store. You could warn people who try to rent it, or you could make a big bonfire and burn all of the copies in the neighborhood. Whatever you can do to help make sure that no one on earth will ever have to experience this film (I believe) would be greatly appreciated by the American public. So if you haven’t gotten the message yet, avoid Instinct, which gets 1/2 a *.
The Young-Uns: The film contains some suspenseful scenes and strong language. It is also senselessly brutal and violent in some scenes. Good Age: No One Who Is Sober/Anyone Who Liked Chill Factor
A Review by Frankie Paiva The 12 Year-Old Movie Reviewer E-Mail me at SwpStke@aol.com Visit my website at http://www.homestead.com/teenagemoviecritic/mainpage.html
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