Basic Instinct 2 Reviews

Tooled and polished for maximum epater le bourgeois value by gleeful bad boys Paul Verhoeven and Joe Eszterhas, BASIC INSTINCT (1992) was many things, including controversial, vulgar, preposterously plotted, gory, defiantly un-PC, dazzlingly art-directed, and utterly nonsensical and shamelessly smutty in a deeply juvenile way. But it was never dull. If only the same were true of the much-delayed sequel written by Leora Barish and Henry Bean and directed by Michael Caton-Jones. Bisexual thrill killer Catherine Trammell (a haggard Sharon Stone, reprising the role that made her infamous) has relocated to London without losing any of her old habits. She still collects kinky lovers and fast cars, continues to write lurid mystery novels, still favors sky-high shoes and plunging necklines, and still prefers slivering her ice with a razor-sharp blade to popping cubes from a freezer tray. The film opens as she and her new boy toy, famous footballer Kevin Franks (Stan Collymore), indulge in some 100-mph auto erotica and wind up in the Thames. She escapes, he dies; the curious thing is that he appears to have been dead before the crash, paralyzed by curare. Hell-bent on making her pay, hangdog Detective Superintendent Roy Washburn (David Thewlis) engages psychiatrist Michael Glass (David Morrissey) to testify that she's a dangerous sociopath. Glass is up for a prestigious university position despite a shadowy blot on his career — a patient slaughtered his pregnant girlfriend while under Glass' care — but Trammell sees right through his facade of cool sophistication and starts picking at the doctor's psychosexual sores. And then the murders begin: First a tabloid journalist (Hugh Dancy), who may have been writing a damaging piece about Glass, is found strangled in bed, and then Glass' ex-wife (Indira Varma) has her throat slashed in the stall of a ladies' room at a trendy club. Everywhere Glass goes, Trammell is bellying up to those closest to him, from his mentor (Charlotte Rampling) to the gnomelike psychiatrist (Heathcote Williams) who holds the key to his professional future. Is Trammell toying with him, or is Glass in the grip of a delusional obsession? BASIC INSTINCT was born of greed-is-good excess and paved the way for a sleazy onslaught of direct-to-video erotic thrillers, next to which its own sequel is shockingly tame. For all the sex and slicing, the most shocking thing about it is how dreary it is.