Basic Instinct series

 Basic Instinct made a loud cultural noise when it was released in 1992, right before the term "political correctness" began to be used widely.  It is a dark story conceived by screenwriter Joe Esterhas  about the investigation into the murder of a former rock star in which the prime suspect is a manipulative,beautiful, and openly bisexual woman who wrote a novel about the same thing.  A lot of suspense films at the time earned their scares by setting up scenes of killers surprising their overpowered victims (Cape Fear, Hand that Rocks the Cradle, Misery, Sleeping with the Enemy).  The protagonist was usually trying to escape the antagonist but Basic Instinct inverts this by having the "hero" deliberately goading the "villain" to come after him.

Spoilers for both Basic Instinct films:

Dutch Director Paul Verhoven, a man who likes to push the envelope and whose films are often guilty pleasures, interprets this material as a tasteless but engrossing enterprise.  Michael Douglas is Detective Nick Curran, Sharon Stone in her first major lead role, is Catherine Trammell, the novelist and suspect, George Dzundza as Gus (Nick's partner and best friend) and Jeanne Tripplehorn is Beth, Nick's psychiatrist who works in the police department.  Dennis Arndt plays Lt. Walker and Daniel van Bargen, is Nielsen, an Internal Affairs investigator who is out to get Nick.  Jan de Bont is the cinematographer and keeps the camera moving and has some terrific tracking shots of San Francisco Bay area setting.  I particularly like the moments in which Nick is following Catherine and she is driving recklessly in and out of traffic on a windy road, hinting at what she is about to do to his life.  The film is edited by Frank Uriost, who had worked on other films with Verhoven, keeps the pace moving and the elegant production design is by Terence Marsh, whose swanky sets helped create the atmosphere.  He did excellent work on the submarines for The Hunt for Red October and the prison of Shawshank Redemption.  

One of the most successful elements of the film is the score by Jerry Goldsmith.  The main theme plays as an allegory to the portrayal of sex in the film, starting soft and seductive and then building to a violent, but not at all romantic, climax.  

The film has elements of one of my favorite films, Vertigo, which also contains troubled another detective trying to overcome a recent tragedy becoming bewitched by an intriguing rich blonde woman in San Francisco.

Jan De Bont had a superb career as a cinematographer, having lensed several films with notable camerawork, including The Hunt for Red October, Die Hard, Lethal Weapon and two other Michael Douglas' films, Shining Through and Black Rain, the latter in which Douglas also played an edgy cop named Nick.  De Bont's camerawork is so strong in this film it makes me almost wish he had not moved to directing.  The shot in which Nick enters the film has him drive quickly into frame in his nondescript sedan with Gus sitting next to him.  Nick brakes and is out of the car almost before it stops.  The camera follows him out of the car and into the house and up the stairs which tells us that Nick is fidgety, restless and always in motion.  During this the camera is fluid, giving us information but never showy.    

Only at this time could this film have been released.  Basic Instinct is about as explicit in its sexuality as any mainstream film had ever been.  R rated films might have a lot of violence and cursing but the sex scenes might show some nudity and some of a sex scene.  Verhoven had to put Basic Instinct before the ratings board repeatedly as it shows the sex act from start to finish no less than four times with nearly complete nudity.  There is not a lot of violence throughout the film but the two stabbing scenes are very gory and show the victim in agony. The film contains a nasty view of humanity, but particularly of gays (every gay person in the film is a killer).  The two characters who are the most decent (Gus and Beth) die violently and even Gus cruelly mocks a tourist speaking another language and Beth's initially sympathetic portrayal vanishes once it comes out that she had an affair with Catherine years earlier.

While Sharon Stone received the lion's share of the publicity for playing the amoral Trammell, what makes the film work is Michael Douglas.  Douglas, similar to Jack Nicholson, but in a different way, can make a sleazy character compelling.  In Fatal Attraction Douglas' character quickly gave into his desires in having an affair with the Glenn Close character but soon regrets it and spends the rest of the film trying to escape the consequences.  Nick is a former drug and alcohol abuser who is trying to rebuild his life after killing two innocent people but it takes just a little prodding from Catherine to drop him off a ledge (in the same night he has violent sex with Beth while clearly thinking of Catherine, and starts drinking and smoking again).  We wonder why he is willingly allowing himself to be drawn into Catherine dangerous web but he is driven by the titular instinct but as well as Gus rightfully points out, trying to punish himself for killing two innocent people.  In some sense Nick is already dead inside.  

We do not know what Nick was like before this happened or how long he was married (all we ever learn about Nick's wife is that she committed suicide) but Douglas' committed performance makes us curious.  Douglas has an even speaking voice and can play desperation without looking weak.  He moves quickly and looks much fitter than he had in recent films such as War of the Roses.  Nick looks out of place in the club scene as a man his age (about 45) would in a place like that (and wisely does not try to dance) but Douglas plays a lot of his scenes with an energetic intensity and probably is cashing in on some audience goodwill.  When he makes a nasty homophobic remark to Roxy the twinkle in Douglas' eye lets him get away with the line in a way that another actor probably could not.  Throughout the film we see Nick making horrible mistakes and though we may not love him we want to follow his journey, even if it leads to his death.

The film punishes him more by making him live, addicted to sex with Catherine but probably going to continue to eventually as Gus says "whittle his way into an ice pick".  But that will probably be a release for him.

Catherine as played by Sharon Stone, is an ice cold blonde in the Hitchcockian vein.  I first saw her playing a similar role in a Psycho inspired episode of Magnum P.I.  Stone has a strong screen presence and excellent bone structure but at the same time Catherine never remotely feels like a real person the way Glenn Close's Alex Forrest did in Fatal Attraction.  Her first close-up is completely calculated for effect.  She is sitting in a chair looking at the Pacific Ocean smoking a cigarette in a perfect setting and ruins it by flicking the cigarette offscreen onto the ground somewhere, which is not the kind of thing that is welcome in California.  Catherine has a husky voice and seems intelligent but utterly sociopathic.  However Catherine is portrayed almost entirely by her effect on others, in particular Nick, rather than as her own person.  Admittedly it is a lot of fun to watch her in action, especially in the interrogation scene, which uses a lot of clever setups and editing as the five male cops try to intimidate Catherine and she completely turns it around by not losing her composure and by playing on her knowledge of Nick.  The famous flashing moment should not be much of a shock since Nick watched her put her dress on earlier without underwear. 

 But what is the trick that she uses to beat the lie detector, which is shown only briefly over a monitor?  

Stone gives a better performance as a similar character in a lesser film called Diabolique, which is a remake of a Cluzot film.  In that film her character is also icy but we understand her motivations much better and a lot of the film focuses on the her dynamic with Isabelle Adjani.

Catherine's tears in the finale do not fit the moment.  She has been so awful throughout the film and Nick is such a wreck that I did not care one bit for what seemed to be her compassion.  I do not know if we are supposed to believe anything she says or not but Nick, still in shock over the events of the night, falls into her arms.  But once he senses that she was about to kill him in the admittedly fun moment (and thus realizing that Catherine is probably the real killer) why does he give it into it even though he is willing to die, instead of arresting her and/or avenging the two friends of his who have died because of her?

The better female performance in the film is by Jeanne Tripplehorn as Beth.  Beth seems like a real person in love against her better instincts with a man who cares about her but really only uses her.  The history of Nick and Beth is not explained fully but can be roughly pieced together.  My sense is that after Nick killed the tourists and his wife committed suicide Nick probably was a wreck and in danger of being terminated.  Beth was probably assigned to work with him and likely brought him back to a large degree but somehow let her guard down and they got involved.  Beth may have ended it as a preemptive measure before falling too far but was only partially successful.  A lot of the discussion of the film is about the scene in which Nick's has far rougher sex with Beth than she wants to but she begrudgingly goes along with because she wants to be with him (there is a much darker version of the scene in which she says no and Nick keeps going).  As bothersome as it is in nearly every scene they have together afterwards she comes off worse for it.  It is sadly fitting that he first suspects and then shoots her at the end.  But upon review Beth is acting suspicious and seems to be oblivious to the fact that Nick's blood is boiling and he is pointing a gun at her.  Did she also not notice that Gus was just violently killed nearby?  It was pretty loud.  Her remark that she loved Nick as she dies and his subsequent shock at the turn of events cements her tragedy.

Like many thriller and action films set in San Francisco there is a car chase that uses the hills.  It feels obligatory and is edited too much for movement and no suspense as the cars seem to reach the top of the high hills quickly without going through the long climbs just so they can do jumps.  Nick seems foolish in not noticing that Catherine's black Lotus is following him and but his recklessness is trying to catch what he thinks is Catherine makes clear that he is willing to die in the process.  The scene is more notable in that starts to sow the seeds of doubt in Nick that Catherine is the killer since it is Roxy who tries to run him down.

I think the finale makes clear that Catherine is the killer but Esterhas' script sets it up that without the final shot it may be Beth.  There is one detail that I think is deliberately never explained which hints more toward Catherine.  Beth comes home to find Nick in her apartment and says her lock is broken.  Nick later finds Catherine in his apartment and when he asks how she got in, she never answers.  Catherine is probably somehow breaking into peoples' apartment (perhaps using the ice pick) and later evidence is found in Beth's apartment which Catherine may have planted.

Basic Instinct still holds plenty of appeal 30 years later and I give it ***.

Basic Instinct connected with people I think due to the mystery, the slightly ambiguous ending, some of the fun lines (she's got that magna cum laude ----- that's done fried up your brain) and the intrigue of the characters.  While the film has a lot of sex the trailer focused on the mystery and the sex alone would not have been enough to make the film.  There was a similar film released about a year later called Body of Evidence directed by Uli Edel starring Willem Dafoe and Madonna which has a lot of the same notes but is nowhere near as involving.  Dafoe is as good an actor as Douglas but his attorney character comes across as a weak version of Harrison Ford's character from Presumed Innocent and Madonna  holds no interest as the femme fatale.  The sex scenes between them are uncomfortable (in one she drips hot candle wax on him) without being the least bit titillating.  Julianne Moore is utterly wasted as Dafoe's wife who deserves better.

Basic Instinct shot Sharon Stone to superstardom and led to her taking on some curious roles.  Stone's first film afterwards was Sliver, which tonally was very similar to Basic Instinct, also scripted by Esterhas, in which she played the protagonist who gets drawn into a dark voyeur's world who may or may not be a killer.  I thought this was a miscalculation for Stone to follow-up her big breakout with a film in the same genre which was nowhere near as tightly plotted as Basic Instinct.  It feels as if director Phillip Noyce, who had made the incredibly suspenseful Dead Calm a few years earlier, filmed the first draft of Sliver instead of a finished screenplay.  

Next Stone appeared in the melodrama Intersection as the most interesting member of a love triangle between her character, Richard Gere, and Lolita Davidovich and then as a would be femme fatale in The Specialist, a dull thriller with Sylvester Stallone and James Woods.  In 1995 Stone played a female character similar to Clint Eastwood's The Man With No Name in Sam Raimi's western The Quick and the Dead which is more of a series of duels than a film but is notable as the first Western film of (and the first time I ever saw) Russell Crowe.  Raimi stages the duels with his usual flourish.  Stone's best work as an actress I believe is in Martin Scorsese's Casino in which she plays a hustler who hooks and marries Robert DeNiro's casino boss, but never falls in love with him.  Eventually she gets hooked on drugs and her downfall is fascinating to watch.  In a long film with a big cast, Stone's Ginger McKenna is by far the most captivating  and some of her scenes with DeNiro are very charged.

Almost as soon as Basic Instinct was released talk of a sequel began, though Michael Douglas said he would not be involved.  Nick's story had been told and Douglas had not liked that his character was constantly overshadowed by Catherine.  Verhoven also did not want to go back.  I was a little surprised that Stone repeatedly said she would be willing as although Catherine could head up more stories it would be hard to make a film as impactful.  In 2001 it looked about ready to go but Stone could not get a male lead to sign up.  I remember reading that among others Kurt Russell and Pierce Brosnan had been approached.  Kurt Russell felt uncomfortable with the material and Brosnan said he had just played a dark character in The Tailor of Panama and wanted to do something different.  Eventually the film was cancelled.  Stone sued to have it made which surprised me further.  After this many years how could a sequel to Basic Instinct have any real impact in the marketplace?  Was Catherine really such a fascinating character that Stone just had to have another go at her or was this paycheck driven?  It turned out Stone had a $14 million salary in her original deal so her pushing for this film appears to be purely financially driven.  

In 2005 it was announced that Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction was indeed moving forward.  I initially had little expectations but noted that director Michael Caton-Jones, who had made some good films (Doc Hollywod, This Boy's Life, City by the Sea, and a film I particularly like, Rob Roy) had signed on.  Caton's assignment gave me some optimism that the project could have some merit.  The script was done by Leora Barish and Henry Bean follows a lot of the same structure as the original.  The film was was originally going to be set in New York.  Caton-Jones decided to move it to London.  David Morrisey, an accomplished British actor, but not a name known to film audiences at the time, plays the male lead Dr. Michael Glass, presumably because no bigger name wanted to spend the film getting manipulated by Trammell.

The London setting allows Catherine a chance to make a first impression on detectives she will spend much of the film making fools of.  Basic Instinct 2 also opens with Catherine potentially killing a famous person during a sex act.  Catherine is speeding in a car while a drugged soccer star has his fingers in her and when she climaxes the car goes into the River Thames.   The soccer star is killed and Catherine is accused of his murder and ordered into therapy sessions with Dr. Glass, played by Morrissey.  From his entry into the story the film is told from Glass' perspective as he gradually falls under her spell.  Murders start to occur around Dr. Glass, which appear to be committed by Catherine, and his already fragile world starts to fall apart.   Glass becomes obsessed with Catherine and there is a mirror scene from the first film in which he has sex with a younger girl but starts getting rough while looking at a picture of Catherine.  

The London presented here is seedier than it is usually presented on film.  One scene has Glass following Catherine to an orgy and locking eyes with her while she has sex with someone else.  The twist this time is that it appears Glass actually committed the murders, while being manipulated by Catherine, but had no memory of doing so and ends up in a mental institution.  A oblique note from Catherine indicates that she may have done them herself but she could simply be referring to the book she wrote about the events of the film.  If Glass committed the murders it is not clear how these occurred in the course of the film based on how we see the events. There is a lot of talk about an old patient of Glass' that had committed crimes that is hard to care about.  The climax is utterly flat and poorly staged.  Nonetheless, if this film had been successful presumably Catherine could have gone off to some other land in a part 3 to mess with another police force.

The best thing I can say is the film is Caton-Jones and his team keep the interest alive and the film has a sheen but Morrissey's Dr. Glass has none of the likability of Douglas' Nick Curran.  Nick is not a nice guy but we see him a lot with his best buddy so we see the lighter side of him.  Glass is pompous from the start and we do not care about him at all.    

Stone recaptures Catherine Trammell's amorality but the character is surrounded by less interesting characters this time around.  Catherine only flits in and out of these films and is only as successful as her interactions.  Catherine's biting lines had more impact in the first film because we were more interested in how they affected the characters.  Stone, who was 47 during filming (or roughly the age of Michael Douglas in the original) looks fantastic but the filmmakers focus too much on trying to make her sex appeal as strong as in the original instead of building on her character and exploring other parts of her personality.     

Ultimately Basic Instinct 2 does not work and while the first film is a guilty pleasure the second film is just trashy without being much fun.  **

Basic Instinct 2 bombed at the U.S. box office, making less than $10 million domestically and about $38 million internationally so the story ends here.