Basic Instinct
It's hard to describe how big director Paul Verhoeven's stylish neo-noir was when it hit theaters in 1992. Splitting audience and critics, the controversial erotic thriller cashed in big at the box office (providing a boom for the genre that was never quite duplicated, despite many imitators) while stirring up controversy for from both the left, for its depiction of a bisexual woman as a nymphomaniac serial killer, and right with the kind of explicit sexuality usually reserved for softcore porn shown late at night on Cinemax. The film made Sharon Stone a star moving her on to bigger and better projects including being the rare woman to headline a western in The Quick and the Dead and a supporting role in Casino both just three years later.
The scrip by Joe Eszterhas oddly chooses to open with showing us a risqué murder involving a naked woman, obviously Sharon Stone, with her face only slightly obscured by her blonde hair, killing her lover in bed at the moment of climax. Then the film spends the next two hours attempting to convince us, and the lead cop on the case (who immediately suspects her guilt), that the murder wasn't committed by the woman we watch stab a man to death in the opening scene. This all makes the ending even more perplexing given it explicitly confirms the film's opening during it's final scene, the one it's been attempting to distance itself from for two hours. You can make a strong argument the film is better off without either scene.
Our main characters are crime novelist Catherine Tramell (Stone), whose occasional fuckbuddy is the murder victim whose death turns out to be straight out of one of Catherine's novels, and beleaguered Police Detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) struggling to keep afloat after an incident involving an undercover shooting, a history of both drug and alcohol abuse, a short temper, and persistent poking by Internal Affairs. Nick and his partner Gus (George Dzundza) get the case, although Nick spends most of the time investigating Catherine on his own while Gus comes and goes mainly to act as an angel on Nick's shoulder.
Verhoeven isn't attempting to break the mode here, he's simply taking the classic femme fatale and somewhat hapless detective framework and ramping up the eroticism to 11 (and then some). The look and style of the film, as often the case of erotic thrillers, attempts to hide the blemishes of the plot. At times it's successful, at other times it's not. Stone, whether dressed or wearing nothing but a smile, looks terrific in every scene and the director knows how to frame her (including in the film's most infamous scene). Sometimes you can watch a film and see a movie star being born, and that's certainly the case with Stone in Basic Instinct.
Basic Instinct is a film to titillate and entertain, but the murder-mystery aspect of the plot don't work nearly as well limiting to something well below the Hitchcockian ideal. It's not the fault of the actors, nor their characters. From their first meeting, it's obvious that Catherine is beautiful, highly intelligent, capable of nearly anything, and likes to play games. She'll jerk Nick around throughout the film while also teasing any man or woman that she comes across. By the end of the movie, Nick is so spun around he doesn't know what end is up (which might be true for you if you attempt to make the inconstancies all make sense).
In its attempt to try and make us forget we already know the murderer, the script gets a little convoluted at times with characters such as Catherine's jealous girlfriend Roxy's (Leilani Sarelle) and police psychologist Dr. Beth Garner (Jeanne Tripplehorn), who Nick has been sleeping with on and off ever since Internal Affairs began investigating him (and who bizarrely has a past with Catherine). Both are attempts at red herrings, although neither believable ones.
It's easy to make the case for Basic Instinct being a notable film. Arguing it's a good film is much harder, and I can't quite get there. Despite its look, Verhoeven's thriller is a bit of a mess. However, it can be an engaging mess at times (even if it is often style over substance). The new 3-disc steelbook contains the movie on both 4K and Blu-ray and a smattering of extras including multiple audio commentaries, introductions from both Stone and Verhoeven, storyboards, screentests, trailers, and more than a half-dozen featurettes.
Watch the trailer- Title: Basic Instinct
- IMDb: link
