Basic Instinct (1992)

Starring: Michael Douglas, Sharon Stone, Jeanne Tripplehorn, George Dzundza, Mr. Kruger from Seinfeld, Newman from Seinfeld, Dorothy Malone, and James Rebhorn
Grade: B+

Why in the world did they ever try to make a Basic Instinct 2? You just can’t replicate a film like this.

Summary

In San Francisco, we open to see a blonde woman having sex with some retired rock star named Johnny Boz. It gets a little aggressive at first. Then, she just brutally stabs the guy with an ice pick, killing him. The next day, Detectives Nick Curran (Douglas) and his partner Gus Moran (Dzundza) show up to the crime scene. Nick is told that Boz’s girlfriend was Catherine Tramell (Stone). They go to Catherine’s house but are introduced to her friend Roxy (Leilani Sarelle) instead. She tells them to go to Catherine’s beach house. Nick and Gus meet Catherine, and she seems rather indifferent about the murder of Boz. She claims she was just fucking him and that she’ll miss him because she “liked fucking him”. She isn’t emotional about it whatsoever. She has this sly grin on her face and even dares the two to bring her in for questioning if they have to. They can’t go further with anything just yet though, so they leave with their tails between their legs.

Nick meets with Beth (Tripplehorn), police psychologist and on-again, off-again girlfriend. They have regular meetings together, so Beth is able to keep Internal Affairs off of Nick’s back because he’s a bit of a loose cannon. Thankfully, Nick has been doing better. He stopped drinking, smoking, and doing cocaine, so that’s a plus. Beth agrees to let Internal Affairs know he’s finally doing good again. He then heads over with Gus to be debriefed on the current situation. In this meeting, they all agree that Catherine Tramell is a suspect. It turns out that she graduated from Berkley with a double major in literature and psychology, is super rich because of her dead parents, was formerly engaged to boxer Manny Vasquez, and she’s a successful author. The kicker is that the last book she wrote was about a retired rock and roll star that gets murdered by his girlfriend with an ice pick.

Well, that’s a wild coincidence…

The department brings in an expert (Stephen Tobolowsky) to talk about what they could potentially be dealing with. He says there are two possibilities. It’s either the writer who did it, or someone that wants to harm the writer by reenacting the murder to incriminate the writer. Nick implies that it may be the writer, so the expert explains that if it is the writer, they are dealing with a smart and diabolical person because of how everything was planned out. He then says that she probably wrote the book to be her alibi. If it’s someone who read the book, then that means they must be harboring a deep hatred for the writer. Either way, they’re dealing with a psycho. Nick and Gus go and pick up Catherine and take her in for questioning but on the way there, she gives Nick a lot of attention. Nick sees a newspaper lying around her house about him in a shooting scandal he was involved in some time ago, meaning she has been studying him. In the car, on the way to the department, she tries to get him to smoke and tells him she’s writing a new book about a cop who falls for the wrong woman. Catherine is not stupid. She knows Nick is interested, even though he acts like he isn’t. She isn’t doing anything too crazy around them, but the stuff she does do seems suspicious.

After the infamous interrogation scene, where it almost seems like she interrogates them, she passes a lie detector test. Nick gives her a ride home and then meets up with his co-workers at the bar. Right away, he gets a drink. Catherine is starting to eat at his psyche, and he’s already starting to crack. As far as the department is concerned, Catherine is cleared of any suspicions, but Nick is not going to let this go.

She has to be involved…right?

My Thoughts:

There’s not a lot of erotic thrillers really worth your time story-wise, but Basic Instinct is one of them. It’s got the star power, an interesting plot, intense performances, and the ultimate 1990s vibe.

Just watch that club scene in particular when Nick goes to meet Catherine on the dance floor. That is PEAK 90s, and you can’t tell me any different.

Of course, the cherry on top is the graphic depictions of sexuality and sexual violence in a mainstream film too, something we didn’t see too often back then. Sharon Stone also shows us why she was one of the hottest actresses of the 90s. Her role as antagonist Catherine Tramell is absolutely unforgettable. We’ve seen the generic, “evil woman” character a lot in thrillers, but Stone makes it something incredibly entertaining to watch (and surprisingly not campy, which it had potential to be). Never have we seen someone so sexy, so confident, and yet, so deliciously evil. She walks around knowing she’s the hottest woman these cops have ever encountered and spends the entire runtime of the film teasing everyone not only in the traditional sense, but also as the potential killer. It’s fantastic. There’s no way she’s not guilty. The way she carries herself from scene to scene gives off every red flag in the book. She’s way too cocky in these situations and dares Nick and numerous cops to try her on any sort of questioning or anything implicating her. It’s like she’s already watched Basic Instinct herself and knows every move of every character.

You ever hear that phrase, “She’s playing chess and everyone else is playing checkers”? That’s what’s going on here.

She’s ahead of everyone and the fact that she’s an expert in psychology just adds to the mystique of her character. She’s just having fun messing with people’s heads. She has to be guilty, but she’s so hot that I completely understand why it goes as far as it does. It’s easy to yell at the screen, “Oh come on! Don’t fall for that bullshit Nick! She’s evil!”, but can you imagine yourself in that situation?

Ask yourself this: what are the two hardest things to do in the world?

Being an anesthesiologist and not falling for the seduction tactics of Sharon Stone in the early 90s.

Basic Instinct is a lot of fun, but there are some issues with it. There are a lot of generic character tropes in this mystery film. As I’ve already mentioned, Stone was able to surpass this writing to make her character a larger-than-life figure. George Dzundza was not as lucky. He plays the fat guy sidekick that purely exists to make some cheap jokes at the expense of the situation and to help the audience understand the complexities of the plot by asking for the situation to be dumbed down. If you were to make a parody of a cop film, this is the type of character you attack first because we’ve seen it so many times before. He’s not detestable or anything, but there’s a few times you groan at some of the things he says. There are also some unintentionally funny scenes where Catherine will say some wild shit to Nick, and he’ll just pause and look at her because of how guilty she sounds. The reaction is so overly dramatic and unrealistic it kind of makes you laugh. It’s another element to the film that is almost tailor-made for a parody movie.

I thought the character of Roxy was pretty interesting and she added a lot to the tense second half of the film, but her introduction in the beginning was kind of stupid. Nick and Gus specifically ask the maid to speak to Catherine. Roxy comes down instead and after they talk for a bit, she says to them “You’re looking for Catherine”. Well, yeah obviously, dipshit. They made it very clear that this was the point of their visit! It seemed like this happened because we had to introduce this character early on in terms of storytelling. This way, it didn’t seem like she was randomly brought in later in the story when it was time for her character to do something. However, the way they went about things gave it a very shoehorned-feel. Also, in terms of mystery, Basic Instinct isn’t the puzzle it pretends to be. I wouldn’t say it’s predictable, but it’s not shocking either. It’s entirely carried by the will they/won’t they situation between Nick and Catherine, and the triangle it becomes because of Beth. I’m not saying you won’t fall for the twists, I’m just saying don’t be shocked if you don’t. Don’t let that deter you from watching the movie.

The mystery isn’t necessarily the reason to see Basic Instinct, you know? The entertainment value is still very high regardless of you potentially figuring out who the killer is before the ending.

Michael Douglas was very well-casted as our imperfect protagonist. Douglas has always had this cool guy persona, but you can tell he has a bit of a twisted, aggressive side. Basic Instinct plays into that well. Yeah, Nick is the hero of the film, but he has a lot of shit wrong with him. He can snap at an instant, is an addict in every sense of the word, and is just as much of a manipulative person as Catherine Tramell (albeit in a different way). Let’s be honest, his one-sided relationship with Beth is pretty shitty. She works her ass off to help Nick and he almost never matches her energy, even putting her in worse situations because he has to be in control. He’s a complicated and troubled man and though he’s likable because of Michael Douglas’s natural charisma and tough demeanor, he finds himself in a lot of these situations because of his addictive personality and inability to let things go. He becomes attached to something and will see it through. Once again, Tramell has every red flag in the book but at one point, just because he’s attracted to her, he tries to talk himself out of his initial thoughts of her being guilty. He can’t help it even though he acts like he has things under control, refusing to hear from others like Beth on what they can do to help. Everything in his life becomes a little less important as he becomes addicted to Catherine…

…but again, I completely understand.

Basic Instinct has its flaws with clichés, stereotypical characters, and silly soap opera moments from time to time, but that doesn’t stop it from being one of the more stylish, sexy, and entertaining thrillers of the 90s. If you’re a fan of this genre (or the subgenre of erotic thrillers), it’s still a must-watch. Michael Douglas is fantastic, Sharon Stone has a star-making performance, and it possesses one of the most memorable scenes in cinema history (the interrogation scene linked in the summary). Basic Instinct is sultry, intense, and R-rated in every sense of the word.

Basically, it’s a lot of fun, and the mind games between our two stars make this a movie worth watching.

Fun Fact: Many women were considered for Catherine Tramell, but a lot of A-Listers turned it down, including Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan, Kim Basinger, Kathleen Turner, Michelle Pfeiffer, Demi Moore, Ellen Barkin, Geena Davis, Kelly Lynch, Greta Scacchi, and Mariel Hemingway. Before Michael Douglas took over as Nick, others considered were Mel Gibson, Kevin Costner, and Richard Gere.