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| Directed by Jon Turteltaub; Starring Cuba Gooding Jr., Anthony Hopkins, George Dzundza, Maura Tierney, Donald Sutherland, John Ashton, and Gary A. Rogers |
I actually really hate giving this film a negative review considering the terrific two leads in it, but the direction alone keeps me from doing so.
Instinct tries its absolute best to go for the sappiest scenes I have seen this year. Whether having a beaten Hopkins stare in the eyes of a gorilla he thinks he has betrayed or having a prisoner uprising against the guards culminating in, and get this, the tearing of all 52 cards in a deck. Hopkins gives a commanding performance as Ethen Powell, a man who lived with gorillas in Africa for years before being arrested for beating to death poachers, but despite his great work I thought the best part of the film was from Cuba Gooding Jr. as Theo Caulder, the psychiatrist sent in to free him from his silence and maybe even get him a retrial where he can get real freedom. I think this is the best performance the usually overrated Gooding has given (I know I’m near alone on this but I did not think he was that great in Jerry Maguire and far from worthy of the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award [over William H. Macy for Fargo and Armin Mueller-Stahl for Shine?!]).
Its the direction that ruins this. Turteltaub was good when he did the light romantic comedy While You Were Sleeping and the ever-so-sappy serio-comedy Phenomenon, but they far from readied him for a drama hiding in the clothing of a thriller. The scenes in Africa are about as appealing as those in Congo and he gets a little too closed in when trying to show the inside of the prison Powell is kept in. I liked the look of the prison, but not the directors course of taking us through the prison. The only scenes that he did well were the properly claustrophobic therapy sessions between Powell and Caulder.
As thrillers go, Instinct is not thrilling and as dramas go, Instinct is overly dramatic.
