Review: Basic Instinct 2

Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone) is back and seemingly up to old tricks in London, as a sexcapade in a car turns into an accident, and the poor bloke is killed. Drugs are found in the victim’s system, and thus Ms. Tramell comes under suspicion from cop David Thewlis. As she is to go on trial, Crown psychologist David Morrissey is called in to assess her. The poor sap has no idea who he’s dealing with or what he’s in for. Tramell manages to wiggle her way out of legal trouble, and sets her sights squarely on her shrink, playing all kinds of games with him. And then dead bodies start turning up. Charlotte Rampling plays Morrissey’s mentor, Indira Varma plays Morrissey’s ex-wife, and Hugh Dancy plays the tabloid writer his ex-wife is banging.

 

I’ve never been a fan of Sharon Stone, but at least in “Basic Instinct” (average film as it was) she was convincing in the part, though I’m not one who finds her drop-dead sexy, either. But after giving terrible performances in flops like “Sliver”, “The Specialist”, “The Quick and the Dead”, “Sphere”, and “Catwoman”, I can see why she was lured back to reprise her role in this 2006 film from English director Michael Caton-Jones (“This Boy’s Life”, “Rob Roy”, “City By the Sea”) and writers Leora Barish (“Desperately Seeking Susan”) and Henry Bean (“Internal Affairs”, “Deep Cover”).

 

In theory, that is.

 

One glance at the script, not to mention her leading man and the English setting should’ve told Ms. Stone that this was going to end up very, very bad. And indeed it does. Nothing about it works, interests, or entertains, I’m afraid. At least with 2009’s direct-to-DVD “Streets of Blood”, Stone only had a supporting role, and could lay the blame elsewhere (whoever shot the damn thing, would be my starting point. It looked hideous), here she’s front and centre. What worked for her once (modestly, at least), fails to work a second time, and if she signed on to this willingly after reading the script, she should be ashamed of herself.

 

And then there’s the actual performance she gives. Wow. Her whole performance is like she’s impersonating herself playing the character in the first film. Worse, the character has no subtlety. Last time we were probably meant to assume she was guilty by the end of it, but the ending was at least a little ambiguous. Here she may as well have titled her book ‘If I DID IT’. It’s a terribly overpitched performance and character. It’s never organic or convincing, and neither is the film. We start off with a ridiculous high-speed masturbation scene that is a rip-off of “Crash”. It’s a really bad and moronic scene that no one could’ve made work. The whole film, though, comes off as Catherine Tramell making a bizarro appearance on “The Bill” (An episode in which there’s apparently a shortage of coffee and no one has slept in weeks). Co-star Morrissey is indeed a British TV veteran (And looks alarmingly like an underfed Liam Neeson, it must be said). There’s a reason why he never became a movie star, and this is it. At least last time Stone could play off the sleazy charm of Michael Douglas, but this guy is so stiff he’s like a well-mannered corpse. In fact, a corpse would probably look a bit more comfortable, and it ain’t his character. He’s just genuinely uncomfortable with any of this, and he plays the dumbest and weakest man in cinematic history. It’s a big call, but it’s true. He, and the film, are typically British in their approach to sex: Dry and analytical, as opposed to the wet and animalistic American approach. OK, not really, but you get what I mean. No sex please, Brits! Morrissey seems to regard sex in the same manner as John Cleese in the sex ed sketch from “The Meaning of Life”. It’s all ridiculously quaint- Ooh, the Brits have discovered doggystyle! Good for them, I guess.

 

Truth be told, by the time this came out, it had already become passé. And more than a little stupid. The original film spawned an entire catalogue of softcore thrillers, even some mainstream ones. By 2006, this was so fifteen years ago. Watching it in 2014, it’s even more useless.

 

About the only thing I could tolerate here was the relaxed performance by David Thewlis, who is good enough to not look bored or embarrassed making this film. He steals it, for what little it’s worth. He brought his working boots with him, but needn’t have bothered. As for Ms. Stone’s body, it’s OK but she showed a lot more of it the first time around. The Brits are way too restrained and repressed to do this sort of thing well (but then, even American cinema is strangely conservative on sexual content these days), and the film is just a really, really bad idea, executed in kind. It’s like one long interrogation scene stretched out, but missing the money shot. Or any sign of life whatsoever, outside of David Thewlis.  

 

Rating: D+