“Basic Instinct” begins with two naked bodies, a mirrored ceiling and an ice pick, which will be wielded in the heat of passion by an unidentified blond woman as she makes a nasty mess of her unsuspecting lover. Paul Verhoeven, whose films include lurid techno-thrillers (“Robocop” and “Total Recall”) and now this red-hot, dangerously modern romance, will never be accused of not knowing how to get an audience’s attention.
Whatever else Mr. Verhoeven winds up being assailed for, with a film that is as violent and misogynistic as it is sexually frank, he hasn’t pulled his punches. That opening murder scene serves as warning that “Basic Instinct” is not bound by the usual rules of decorum, not even those rules that apply to homicidal psychopaths playing cat-and-mouse games with the San Francisco police.
It’s no wonder that when Detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) and his partner, Gus (George Dzundza), first interrogate the glamorous Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone), who is the prime suspect in that ice-pick murder, they exchange wary glances over Catherine’s absolute diffidence and superiority. Neither the detectives nor the audience has seen anything quite like Catherine before.
Or maybe they have: Madonna is an obvious model for this rich, controlling woman who turns her sexuality into a form of malice, deliberately mocking and inverting ordinary notions of heterosexual seduction. When Catherine offhandedly tells five police detectives that she has nothing to hide, she is laying down a contemptuous challenge.
In an interrogation-room scene that will be remarked upon as much for its carefully built tension level as its use of nudity, Catherine is shown deliberately crossing and uncrossing her legs as a way of embarrassing her questioners, who discover that Catherine has the same disdain for underwear that she has for everything else. In this film’s disturbing scheme, the power to arouse and the power to humiliate go hand in hand.
It is the conceit of Joe Eszterhas’s enterprising screenplay, which does what it can to insert an obscene thought into every situation, that the recently reformed Nick and the reckless Catherine are two of a kind, and are thus inexorably drawn together. It is also the screenplay’s idea that this is potentially dangerous to Nick’s health, since Catherine, while trying to drive Nick back to his former vices (drinking, smoking, cocaine), may also be plotting his murder. An heiress with too much time on her hands, Catherine writes mystery novels with fictitious stories that have a way of coming true. Is this another of Catherine’s taunts? Or is someone staging similar crimes in an attempt to frame her? The $3 million reportedly paid for Mr. Eszterhas’s screenplay did not buy a coherent ending.
Mr. Verhoeven is not seriously inconvenienced by the script’s inconsistencies, or even by the fact that it eventually devolves into a series of house calls. (Mr. Eszterhas seldom comes up with more interesting ways for the characters to meet.) This director’s forte is slam-bang sensationalism of the sort that transcends ordinary nit-picking, and his skill is readily apparent. “Basic Instinct” transfers Mr. Verhoeven’s flair for action-oriented material to the realm of Hitchcockian intrigue, and the results are viscerally effective even when they don’t make sense. Drawing powerfully on the seductiveness of his actors and the intensity of their situation, Mr. Verhoeven easily suspends all disbelief.
As a hurt, embittered man drawn against his better judgment into a maelstrom of temptation, Mr. Douglas recalls Cary Grant as often as he’s meant to (Mr. Verhoeven even attempts something like the sustained kissing sequence from “Notorious”). He also engages in the kinds of on-screen behavior that never would have been called for in Grant’s day, and conveys emotion that goes well beyond the film’s carefully choreographed sexual behavior. Mr. Douglas, whose strong and involving performance holds the film together, helps to humanize his bionically beautiful co-star. Ms. Stone delivers Catherine’s most heartless dialogue with chilling verisimilitude.
As the other woman in Nick’s life, a police psychologist who both treats him professionally and sleeps with him, Jeanne Tripplehorn makes a memorable impression in a completely impossible role. Also notable are Leilani Sarelle as Nick’s main competition for Catherine’s attention, and Mr. Dzundza, who is jovial and entertaining as the only quasi-normal figure in the story. A smiling Dorothy Malone turns up in a small, very peculiar role.
Frankly intent on keeping its audience entertained at all costs, “Basic Instinct” employs one dizzying car chase, some impressive California real estate, Jan De Bont’s bright and scenic cinematography, Ellen Mirojnick’s series of skin-tight costumes for Ms. Stone (who at times furthers the Hitchcock motif by dressing in the Kim Novak-Tippi Hedren mode), and Jerry Goldsmith’s effectively insidious score. It also incorporates four apparently homicidal women, at least three of whom are bisexual, by the time the story is over.
This film is far too bizarre and singular to be construed as homophobic, but the bisexuality helps to undermine any possibility of real closeness between the story’s men and women, which is apparently the point. Hostility between the sexes is an essential part of this film’s AIDS-era escapism, with its suggestion that the possibility of physical violence is what gives sex its greatest element of danger.
Basic Instinct (1992)
Directed by: Paul Verhoeven
Starring: Michael Douglas, Sharon Stone, George Dzundza, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Denis Arndt, Leilani Sarelle, Bruce A. Young, Chelcie Ross, Dorothy Malone, Stephen Tobolowsky
Screenplay by: Joe Eszterhas
Production Design by: Terence Marsh
Cinematography by: Jan de Bont
Film Editing by: Frank J. Urioste
Costume Design by: Ellen Mirojnick
Music by: Jerry Goldsmith
MPAA Rating: R for strong violence and sensuality, and for drug use and language.
Distributed by: TriStar Pictures
Release Date: March 20, 1992 (US), May 8, 1992 (UK)
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