Well... This seems to be (for me at least) a cross between AWAKENINGS and THE MAN IN THE WILDERNESS, but that's just a judgement based on the trailer. I liked both of those films, so... I'm looking forward to seeing this flick, but for now, The Effigy is taking over...
i saw _instinct_ last night, the cuba gooding jr/anthony hopkins psychothriller (ha!). it was neither psycho nor thrilling. it was boring. thank god this isn't hopkins' last film (_titus andronicus_ is the last, i believe - that is, if he doesn't come out of 'retirement'), because it would be an abomination for somebody to go out on a note like this. while neither of the two title guys give bad performances, they're nothing spectacular. instead, they're precisely what you'd expect: good work from good actors trying to make the best of a mediocre script and a pisspoor idea. there isn't an original bone in _instinct_'s body - but why should there be, with a guy like jon turteltaub at the helm? you should know that _phenomenon_ is on my worst movies of all time list. it offends me that it exists. now, don't get me wrong - i wanted to like _instinct_. i gave it a chance. but there were points where i just couldn't contain my laughter and, apparently, neither could the rest of the audience, who all seemed to hate it when we were walking out of the theatre. of course, i couldn't help thinking "amy! mighty joe!" during the opening credit sequence. lots of stan winston gorillas.
plot - hopkins plays ethan powell, a brilliant (but aren't they all in the movies?) primatologist who lived with a bunch of gorillas for a couple of years until he killed a bunch of forest rangers and got thrown in rwandan prison. now he's been shipped back to the united states where he can enjoy the amenities of the federal penitentiary psycho ward. gooding plays theo caulder, a brilliant (but aren't they all in the movies?), ambitious psychologist who makes it his mission to help heal powell. what follows is a run-of-the-mill give-and-take relationship in which powell becomes semi-normal and caulder learns a bunch of life lessons. snooze.
acting - as i said above, nothing groundbreaking. it's all well and good to see a couple of excellent actors go head-to-head, but there needs to be something to back it up. and here, there's nothing. maura tierney, playing the daughter powell, is woefully underused to the point of being wasted. donald sutherland phones in yet another performance as gooding's supervising faculty member at miami u or wherever it is they work. john ashton (you know, the penny-pinching dad from _some kind of wonderful_ and sergeant taggert from _beverly hills cop_) does nice work as a prison guard, and the psychos in the pen were suitably, uh, psycho.
everything else - this script is boring, the dialogue is often canned to the point where you can literally talk right along with it because you know what they're going to say. turteltaub's direction is rotten. chalk this up as yet another film that steals "the shot" (you know, the one of tim robbins, arms outstretched as the rain pours down and the camera cranes up and over to peer down at him) from _the shawshank redemption_. the film never really goes anywhere except the interviews between calder and powell, although some of the african scenes are decent.
this was, as far as i know, a finished print. on the plus side, the _summer of sam_ trailer was attached. now *that* looks awesome.
just call me the effigy.
