The original 'Basic Instinct" was a 1992 tornado of star power from Michael Douglas & Sharon Stone, strong & stylistic direction by Paul Verhoeven and a Jerry Goldsmith score that wrapped you in sex and mystery.
14 years later, BASIC INSTINCT landed with a thud, an inferior and impotent sequel that's an embarrassment to all involved.
Lacking any imagination, the film simply drops novelist Catherine Tramell (the returning Stone, looking ageless but given little new to do) in London instead of San Francisco.
She's still pushing the envelope of social norms, causing mayhem when she and her football playing boyfriend end up underwater inside a sinking car. He dies. But after investigation, it seems he was dead before the car ever went airborne into the Thames.
Detective Roy Washburn (the always interesting David Thewlis) wants his most buttoned up psychiatrist to evaluate Trammel, someone untouchable by her legendary seduction. He chooses Michael Glass, played by David Morrissey with one tenth the personality and presence he'd show the following decade as The Governor on "The Walking Dead".
Trammel flips Glass over like a pancake, pulling him into a deadly game of cat & mouse layered in sex and control. That sounds interesting. It isn't.
Say what you want about the eccentricities of Joe Ezterhaus as a writer and Verhoeven as a director, but together, they infused the original film with a dangerous, suspenseful vibe that pushed the envelope.
Director Michael Caton-Jones is in over his head, piling up another trash film on the same level of his 1997 travesty "The Jackal", a remake of "Day of the Jackal: that was so bad it's sacrilege to mention the two films in the same sentence.
Everything is forced and nothing is polished.
Charlotte Rampling (Broadchurch, The Verdict) is one of the most hypnotic actresses of her generation, but even she can't bring gravitas to this sloppy mess.
The first and only film sequel to a huge box office hit to fail to gross $10 million at the box office, BI 2 stands as the epitome of how NOT to create a follow up.
At one point, Stone's Trammel says 'Death is always there. It's the only thing that's real.' Except maybe sex sometimes."DAVID MOR
Huh?
Maybe they should have made a fortune cookie instead of a movie.
BASIC INSTINCT 2 gets an F.
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