Review of Basic Instinct (1992) by Paul K — 15 Aug 2010

Mostly it was about lust and seeing how long two people can play cat and mouse before someone ends up dead. While the mixing of raw sexual intensity and the criminal investigation was effectively, I thought the plot as it unfolded lacked the subtle depth that a master mystery writer like Hitchcock could bring.

The problem for me is the tone never changes. There's also not the gradual back and forth shifts that make you really believe one person's the killer and then the other one. Even the psychological shifts - the mindfuck, if you will, which was developed to an even greater extent in Basic Instinct II - were too rushed, too arbitrary to really develop in the viewer's mind.

Anyone can push amoral, sociopathic behavior to the extreme - it takes skill to develop it and handle it with subtlety, and create the kind of plot twists that take the viewer by complete surprise. While Basic Instinct had some of that kind of depth, it didn't go far enough.

It was too impatient and too focused on things like the area between Sharon Stone's legs. I just kind of decided everyone's a little crazy and there's not going to be any resolution, just a continual high tension, sexually charged cat and mouse game, that ends up with mysterious unsolved - or unsatisfactorily solved - murders.

And probably the most explicit, raw sex of any R rated, big box office movie I've seen.