You remember this trailer don't ya folks? It's the one where Anthony Hopkins looks like a cross between Charles Manson and Jeremiah Johnson and The Man Called Horse! INSTINCT is what it's called, and the consistantly reincarnated Peter Proud has once again opened back the curtain to give us a looksee... go on... look...
Harry, long time no scoop, it's Peter Proud here with another successful mission sneaking into the mouse backyard and watching one of their summer treats --- Instinct. I did my best to look like a Mouse employee and sat in for the screening...so how was it, you ask? In one word --- WHOA!!!
Now, I've liked most of what Jon Turteltaub's films (Cool Runnings and While You Were Sleeping) but his last outing Phenomenon was a bit of a disappointment. So I was skeptic about this one since on previews I saw it looked another one in the long lines of Monkey movies Disney is cooking (George of the Jungle, Mighty Joe Young, Tarzan and this one), but the end result took me by surprise. It had its flaws but it's still a very solid and recommendable movie.
Story begins with Dr. Ethan Powell (Sir Tony Hopkins) being moved from his Ugandan prison cell to Florida. He was jailed for murdering park rangers and refusing to speak a single word during the trial or something. Dr. Theo Calding (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) is an upstart psychiatrist looking for a big break, he sees analyzing and breaking through to Powell's psyche a big opportunity (BOOKS!!!) to hit paydirt and volunteers for the work to visit him in his Florida Psychiatric Prison Ward and evaluate him and the rest of the inmates. Powell, looking like Sean Connery's first scenes in "The Rock" but quietly acting up a storm, errupts at the airport and his daughter (Maura Tierney) and wife got totally disenchanted with him. Still continuing with his creepy demeanors in prison, the rest of the film unfolds as Cuba learns of his secrets and why he went into that killing rampage. Along the way, Powell shows the mean prison guards that the inmates are human beings that need respect, much like the family of gorillas he lived with in the Ugandan forest.
I won't spoil the film for you...once the two actors started sparring with each other (acting-wise) the movie is so juicy good, I could feel the intensity at my backrow seat steaming. There are a couple of scenes in there that were treated very well (kudos to what I think is final music by Danny Elfman) and not done as an overkill. The road to getting the two main characters to meet was a bit boring here and there but generally passable, you have to accept it as a set-up, obviously. But some tighter editing could really make it better (maybe too late). Hopkins have been faxing in most of his performances since "Howards End" really (The Edge, anyone?) and this one, supposedly one of his last movies if he does retire, brings back the glimpse of just how good this man is...and Cuba Gooding, Jr., who could have been blown away holds his ground against the Legend.
I thought Donald Sutherland's charcter as Gooding's mentor was a bit paper cut-out (but aren't most of his roles are that way?) and you feel a sense of awkwardness between Gooding and Tierney (whose underwritten role feels a bit wasted), I heard there's supposedly insinuations of a love angle between the two but I can't see any in this print I saw, maybe they've tweaked it a bit. But heck, minor distractions notwithstanding, I thought this is a vintage acting tour-de-force by two outstanding actors. And that alone is good enough reason to watch the film again...that and paying closer attention to some of the scripts' lines which I thought were pretty well written. Although Gerald DiPego's work on this one can be best described as uneven (the slow first 15% or so is unnerving), it did had shining moments. I would believe this is a very final version (maybe just minor color and sound changes) so moviegoers should be treated to this version by June.
