INSTINCT was an obvious bit of attempted Oscar bait from director Jon Turteltaub back in 1999. Turteltaub is the man responsible for such generic adventure fare as the NATIONAL TREASURE movies and generic family fare as THE KID. So what better man to direct a generic wannabe award winner? INSTINCT has all of the ingredients to be a critical favorite but it's missing that one crucial element: being a good movie. I'm not saying it's a bad movie because it's actually not. It's just forgettable. You probably won't feel let down after spending two hours watching this movie, but it won't take much longer to forget that it existed. INSTINCT wants to be tense. It wants to be inspirational. It wants to tug at the heartstrings. But it doesn't, because it's so transparent in its intentions. Or at least, I thought so. The movie follows an aspiring psychologist named Theo Caulder, played by Cuba Gooding Jr. He's assigned to a unique case by his mentor (Donald Sutherland) and sees an opportunity to jump-start his career with a bestseller. Accomplished anthropologist Ethan Powell (Anthony Hopkins) has been transferred to a prison in the US from Rwanda, where he was doing time for murdering men after disappearing into the jungles for nearly two years. Upon Powell's return to civilization, he is a changed man. Feral and refusing to speak, Caulder dedicates his time to Powell, determined to find out what happened in those jungles, why he disappeared, and what drove him to murder.
What bothered me about this movie was that it couldn't decide what it wanted to focus on. There are two main through-lines in this movie, running at the same time. There's, of course, the main storyline with Caulder and Powell and the story of their interactions, and then there's an entirely different unrelated subplot of how the prison that Powell is transferred to is a miserable place where the guards abuse the mentally handicapped and the prison shrink does nothing for his patients. In my opinion, these are two different movies and conflict with each other. Once you finally get involved in the Powell/Caulder interviews, it rips you away from that to show how Caulder is inspired to reform the prison's system for handling its mental patients. And it bounces back and forth so often that I just didn't care as much as I should for either storyline. Subplots are OK, but they don't generally get equal screen time with the main story because it detracts from it. Besides, we've already got movies that handle uncaring mental health care in bigger and better ways (e.g. ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST). I watched this movie because I wanted to see Hopkins and Gooding Jr. to engage in a mental game of cat and mouse. I wanted a good, tense psychological drama and I got it in bits and pieces. Each story was entertaining enough but the entire movie ends up leaving you (well, I suppose it left me anyway) unfulfilled.
Another issue I had with the movie is that it's populated with characters we've already seen before. No one in the movie feels like an original creation. The obvious example is Anthony Hopkins as Ethan Powell. In this movie, he's just a toned down version of his more famous (and more interesting) Hannibal Lecter. He was probably the worst choice for the role because of the obvious parallels, unless the filmmakers were counting on people to make that connection and hoped it would add to it. Cuba Gooding Jr. is every movie psychologist you've ever seen rolled up into one man as Caulder. He does well enough, as this was back before he thought SNOW DOGS was a smart career move. But, come on we've seen this shtick before and he isn't bringing anything new to it. His optimism is meant to be inspirational...he IS going to reach this troubled man! He IS going to make this horrible prison a better place for it's inhabitants! Blah. The rest of the cast fails to make any sort of impressions as shallow caricatures. There's the disillusioned prison psychiatrist who's given up hope the evil guard who finds entertainment in turning the strongest of the patients against the weak. There's Powell's daughter, long since given up on her absent father. It's just all so been there, done that. If they'd focused on one story (the Powell/Caulder one, naturally) and fleshed out their characters into real people, this movie might've been what it was blatantly aspiring to be. Instead, it's good enough for a quiet evening but don't go in expecting the inspiring tale they're trying to sell.
What bothered me about this movie was that it couldn't decide what it wanted to focus on. There are two main through-lines in this movie, running at the same time. There's, of course, the main storyline with Caulder and Powell and the story of their interactions, and then there's an entirely different unrelated subplot of how the prison that Powell is transferred to is a miserable place where the guards abuse the mentally handicapped and the prison shrink does nothing for his patients. In my opinion, these are two different movies and conflict with each other. Once you finally get involved in the Powell/Caulder interviews, it rips you away from that to show how Caulder is inspired to reform the prison's system for handling its mental patients. And it bounces back and forth so often that I just didn't care as much as I should for either storyline. Subplots are OK, but they don't generally get equal screen time with the main story because it detracts from it. Besides, we've already got movies that handle uncaring mental health care in bigger and better ways (e.g. ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST). I watched this movie because I wanted to see Hopkins and Gooding Jr. to engage in a mental game of cat and mouse. I wanted a good, tense psychological drama and I got it in bits and pieces. Each story was entertaining enough but the entire movie ends up leaving you (well, I suppose it left me anyway) unfulfilled.
Another issue I had with the movie is that it's populated with characters we've already seen before. No one in the movie feels like an original creation. The obvious example is Anthony Hopkins as Ethan Powell. In this movie, he's just a toned down version of his more famous (and more interesting) Hannibal Lecter. He was probably the worst choice for the role because of the obvious parallels, unless the filmmakers were counting on people to make that connection and hoped it would add to it. Cuba Gooding Jr. is every movie psychologist you've ever seen rolled up into one man as Caulder. He does well enough, as this was back before he thought SNOW DOGS was a smart career move. But, come on we've seen this shtick before and he isn't bringing anything new to it. His optimism is meant to be inspirational...he IS going to reach this troubled man! He IS going to make this horrible prison a better place for it's inhabitants! Blah. The rest of the cast fails to make any sort of impressions as shallow caricatures. There's the disillusioned prison psychiatrist who's given up hope the evil guard who finds entertainment in turning the strongest of the patients against the weak. There's Powell's daughter, long since given up on her absent father. It's just all so been there, done that. If they'd focused on one story (the Powell/Caulder one, naturally) and fleshed out their characters into real people, this movie might've been what it was blatantly aspiring to be. Instead, it's good enough for a quiet evening but don't go in expecting the inspiring tale they're trying to sell.