THE AISLE SEAT - "INSTINCT"
by Mike McGranaghan
If you threw Gorillas in the Mist, The Silence of the Lambs, and Good Will Hunting into a blender, mixed them, then removed most of the entertainment value, you might have something like Instinct, the new thriller from director Jon Turtletaub (While You Were Sleeping, Phenomenon). Here's a movie that follows a very generic formula from start to finish, all the while pretending that it's much more thoughtful and original than it really is.
Anthony Hopkins stars as Ethan Powell, an anthropologist who went to Africa to study gorillas and ended up living among them. One day, for reasons that no one understands, he kills several park rangers. Because of his affiliation with a major university, he is brought back to the United States and assigned to work with an up-and-coming psychiatrist. His name is Dr. Theo Caulder (Cuba Gooding, Jr.). Theo is initially stumped by Ethan, who has chosen to remain mute. Eventually, though, he comes to believe that he can open Ethan up and get him to reveal what really happened in the jungle.
As you can see, Instinct borrows its "living among the apes" element from Gorillas in the Mist, its "killer slowly reveals information to an enthusiastic rookie" element from Silence of the Lambs, and has a "psychiatrist bonds with troubled genius" element similar to the one in Good Will Hunting. As I watched the picture, I had a continual feeling of deja vu. It's one of those movies where I always felt three steps ahead of the characters on screen. Everything surprises them; I'm only surprised by the fact that they are so surprised.
A big problem is that in Silence of the Lambs - which this movie most closely tries to emulate - you got a real sense of knowledge being withheld, which in turn created a feeling of dread. Hopkins, of course, also starred in that one; you always believed that his character knew all the facts, which he then proceeded to dole out to the Jodie Foster character bit by bit. His character in Instinct, in contrast, more or less seems to say things arbitrarily. Theo just keeps bugging Ethan until he opens up. Naturally, this happens near the end of the film at a dramatically convenient time. The whole structure of the movie seems wrong - there's no tension built as we await the resolution of the mystery. (I should also add that it's very easy to guess the "mystery" of why Ethan killed people; this is a movie with a strong sense of political and ecological correctness.)
Further compounding the problem are a number of scenes that just stop the movie cold. For example, there is a subplot about a prison for psychiatric criminals. In the prison, only one inmate per day is allowed to go outside. The guards come by every day and throw a playing card into each cell; whoever has the ace of diamonds is the one who can go out. One particular inmate - a physically intimidating guy - then forcibly takes the card from whoever has it. The subplot is there to reinforce the theme of the movie - freedom often involves a fight - but it rings false. Instinct wants desperately to make an Important Statement, but its ideas are too simplified and cliched to make an impact.
The only thing I really liked about Instinct were the performances, which are good enough to make a pretty dumb movie passably watchable. Hopkins and Gooding are both enormously talented and they get in some good scenes together. Because they are intelligent actors, they create occasional moments of interest, even when the screenplay lets them down, which is pretty often. Instinct ends with a sappier-than-sappy ending that tries to wrench our emotions with the absurd notion that these men are something more than just psychiatrist and patient. Even Hopkins and Gooding aren't talented enough to pull that one off.
(
out of four)
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