Stone's aside, 'Instinct' franchise doesn't have legs

Robert Denerstein, Rocky Mountain News

Friday, March 31, 2006

If you didn't know better, you might think Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction is the title of an obscure psychological symposium.

Of course, you do know better and you can probably guess that Basic Instinct 2 isn't bashful about declaring its true purposes. The movie opens with Sharon Stone and a companion speeding through a London tunnel. Almost before you can say "Freud," we've seen everything from orgasm to car crashes and possible murder.

Stone's character may be amoral, but she definitely knows how to keep busy. When she's not being arrested, she devotes her time to writing mystery novels and seduction.

The Risk Addiction part of the title might be a tipoff. The filmmakers apparently aren't going to risk avoiding any form of titillation, and, yes, before the movie concludes, you will have seen Stone's character naked. At one point, she allows her robe to fall open. In the same scene, she climbs into a Jacuzzi, and I haven't even mentioned the sex.

For all its supposed heat, this London-based second helping is dark, dreary and of dubious value. Much of the tension (and there is some) involves wondering just how the filmmakers are going to replicate the signature leg-crossing scene that became the biggest talking point of Round One.

Let's face it - it's been 14 years since the first movie lighted up the nation's multiplexes, and I couldn't help wishing Stone had resisted the temptation to go backward.

In reprising her role as Catherine Davis Tramell, Stone sometimes seems to slip into near-parodic mode. Her made-up face has a rigid, doll-like quality. And if chilly arrogance could be measured by the pound, she'd drop right through the floor.

Maybe that's why the story also focuses on Dr. Michael Glass (David Morrissey), a psychiatrist who's hoping to be honored with a university chair. Glass shows up to make a psychiatric evaluation of Tramell, who early on is suspected of murder.

You don't need a degree in psychology to know that Glass will be tempted by Tramell and that the two will become involved in an elaborate cat-and-mouse game with potentially lethal consequences. Despite Glass' efforts to behave professionally, it's unlikely that Basic Instinct 2 will be shown in the image-building portion of the next American Psychiatric Association convention.

Morrissey, a dour-looking fellow who blends with the movie's darkly hued surfaces, gives a mostly one-note performance in which he manages to look severe. Put another way, I've seen Michael Douglas and he's no Michael Douglas.

For what it's worth, David Thewlis supplies the most memorable performance; he portrays a London detective who vows to put Tramell behind bars. Charlotte Rampling, so wonderful in recent French movies, seems to be slumming. She signs on as one of Glass' colleagues. At one point, she's shown trying to learn basic Hungarian, raising fears that a Basic Instinct 3 is planned for Budapest.

The plot exhumes some of the now-moldy elements of the first movie, dropping red herrings as quickly as Tramell sheds her clothing. A variety of characters turn into suspects as murders crop up, and the movie moves through a variety of modern London interiors. The decor of many of these interiors is so heavy on polished surfaces that you wonder whether anyone in the movie has ever heard of carpeting.

Director Michael Caton-Jones tries to give the movie a bit of psychological heft, and at times we can't help but wonder who's doing what to whom. But Basic Instinct 2 moves toward an ending that delivers more by way of mediocrity than kick.

And for all its trumped-up eroticism and all the shameless pulls and tugs of plot, we know from the outset that this movie isn't going to so much advance Tramell's story as exploit it anew. Most sequels are unnecessary, and this one does nothing to break the pattern.