In my review of another Cuba Gooding Jnr movie MEN OF HONOR I mentioned the movie tries too hard to impress the Oscar board in the hope of getting a few awards . I had the exact same feeling watching this movie . Everything seems to whallop us over the head as it screams " Please Mister Academy Award person - Give us some Oscars "
The story itself is one of those truimph of the human will type plots with the main character having some sort of social / psychological impediment ala RAINMAN etc with lots of sentimental scenes that on paper may have appeared touching but on screen seem rather forced , unconvincing and mawkish
There also seems to be another problem of what INSTINCT is trying to be . It`s difficult not to notice its attempt to be an awards movie but is it also trying to be something else ? Is it in fact trying to be a gritty prison drama also ? I think it might be via the sometimes brutish guards and the man mountain convict with the obsession for the ace of diamonds but this aspect makes the entire production feel confused and unfocussed
I noted in the trivia section that Sean Connery turned down the role of Ethan and this was probably a good idea since he appears in far too many productions that seem ill thought out ( INSTINCT would have been no different in that respect ) but Anthony Hopkins seems a bizarre replacement. The reason Hopkins is rightly well regarded as an actor is down to one main thing - His voice . Strange that he was cast as Ethan when the character doesn`t utter a word until almost half way through the movie
The story itself is one of those truimph of the human will type plots with the main character having some sort of social / psychological impediment ala RAINMAN etc with lots of sentimental scenes that on paper may have appeared touching but on screen seem rather forced , unconvincing and mawkish
There also seems to be another problem of what INSTINCT is trying to be . It`s difficult not to notice its attempt to be an awards movie but is it also trying to be something else ? Is it in fact trying to be a gritty prison drama also ? I think it might be via the sometimes brutish guards and the man mountain convict with the obsession for the ace of diamonds but this aspect makes the entire production feel confused and unfocussed
I noted in the trivia section that Sean Connery turned down the role of Ethan and this was probably a good idea since he appears in far too many productions that seem ill thought out ( INSTINCT would have been no different in that respect ) but Anthony Hopkins seems a bizarre replacement. The reason Hopkins is rightly well regarded as an actor is down to one main thing - His voice . Strange that he was cast as Ethan when the character doesn`t utter a word until almost half way through the movie