Instinct

Instinct

Instinct
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DVD details

Actor: Anthony Hopkins, Cuba Gooding Jr., Donald Sutherland, George Dzundza, Maura Tierney
Brand: Buena Vista Home Video
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 126 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1999-11-16
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Walt Disney Video
Product features:
  • Anthony Hopkins plays a psychiatrist studying apes in Africa, when he disappears for two years. Soon after he is accused of murder and sent back to the States where he is placed in a mental institution. Cuba Gooding, Jr plays a psychologist assigned to his case. System Requirements: Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Cuba Gooding Jr., John Ashton, George Dzundza, Donald Sutherland, and Maura Tierney.

DVD Reviews of Instinct

DVD Review: absurd psychodrama
Summary: 1 Stars

The bottom of the pop-psychology barrel is scraped with "Instinct," a bizarre, pointless amalgam of "The Silence of the Lambs," "Gorillas in the Mist" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" that represents a major stumble in the careers of both Anthony Hopkins and Cuba Gooding Jr.

Hopkins stars as a research anthropologist who abandons family, home and, eventually, sanity to take up residence, Sigourney Weaver-style, with a family of apes that, of course, just welcome him fully into their ersatz anthropoid family unit. While he's making nicey-nice with the gorillas, a band of hunters attacks the camp, killing most of their number, a crime for which he is returned to the states in a strange state of self-imposed silence. Gooding jr. plays the crack psychiatrist assigned to work with this violently deranged man and attempt to draw the truth from him about what really happened in the deep dark jungles of Africa.

Any movie that begins with the cerebral Hopkins singlehandedly demolishing an entire airport terminal, while scores of armed guards struggle to subdue him, is not destined to register high on the credibility meter. The screenplay, in fact, degenerates into a snail-paced series of increasingly ludicrous confrontations between the deranged killer and the doctor, wherein the psychiatrist, predictably, is set straight on some eternal verities by the psychotic truth teller. How often must we be subjected to this idiotic notion that all therapists are really only trying to work out their own redemptions and that the deeply emotionally disturbed patients somehow possess the requisite wisdom we mere rational mortals do not to help them achieve this? The film trods this tried-and-true path right up to a thoroughly wretched final scene that defies all credibility and lapses completely into the absurd. At one point, to achieve his redemption, Gooding Jr. rallies the psychotic prisoners to band together and stand up against the tyrranical prison forces arrayed against them - in a scene filled with the kind of phony emotional uplift that is always backed up by a swelling, sobbing orchestral composition and endless shots of characters looking meaningfully upward in teary-eyed pride and determination. If only Jack Nicholson had had such an advocate!

Cuba Gooding Jr., though he certainly tries hard, lacks the gravitas necessary to carry off a leading role of this magnitude, and Hopkins provides his customary grating mannerisms as he lectures us about the virtues of uncivilized, primitive Man. "Instinct" is thoroughly derivative yet it does have the chutzpah to make momentary fun of itself by including Sigourney Weaver as the butt of a one-liner. It is the one moment of cleverness, honesty and courage in an otherwise dull, incredible and utterly uninteresting film.

More Instinct reviews:
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Description of Instinct

Don't miss Academy Award(R)-winners Anthony Hopkins (Best Actor, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, THE INNOCENT) and Cuba Gooding, Jr. (Best Supporting Actor, JERRY MAGUIRE, PEARL HARBOR) in this highly provocative psychological thriller from the hit-making director of PHENOMENON and WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING! In a prison for the criminally insane, deranged anthropologist Ethan Powell (Hopkins) is set to be examined by a bright young psychiatrist, Theo Caulder (Gooding). Driven by ambition and a hunger for the truth, Caulder will eventually risk everything -- even put his very life on the line -- in a harrowing attempt to understand the bizarre actions of this madman! Also starring Donald Sutherland (A TIME TO KILL, DISCLOSURE) and Maura Tierney (FORCES OF NATURE, LIAR LIAR) in a first-rate cast -- Powell and Caulder's adventure of the mind is a riveting journey of discovery ... no matter what the cost!
Anthony Hopkins is a brilliant actor; Cuba Gooding Jr. is a talented guy with a lot of charm. Both have recently won Oscars (Best Actor for The Silence of the Lambs and Best Supporting Actor for Jerry Maguire, respectively); neither can make Instinct compelling. Hopkins plays a brilliant anthropologist studying gorillas who entered into their world, becoming part of their family, and who killed two park rangers in the gorillas' habitat. Gooding plays a brilliant young psychiatrist who's supposed to evaluate Hopkins and determine whether he's fit to stand trial. Hopkins, along with a number of other psychotics, is being held at a prison, which serves to illustrate the movie's themes about control and freedom. It's not so much that the ideas themselves are hokum--nature versus civilization is always a rich topic--it's that Instinct boils them down to inane sound bites. Psychology is reduced to a game in which the psychiatrist's job is to trick the patient into believing the correct thing or revealing the key that will solve the puzzle. There's not a credible moment in the whole movie, despite the presence of a good cast, including Donald Sutherland (M*A*S*H, Klute, Without Limits, and many, many others) and Maura Tierney (TV's Newsradio). --Bret Fetzer
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