There are films that are bad. There are films that are terrible. There are films whose authors should crawl under the nearest rock out of shame and never see light of day ever again. And there are those films that are likely to make even most peace loving person entertain homicidal thoughts. Instinct, 1999 drama directed by Jon Turtletaub, belongs to the latter category.
The film is very loosely inspired by Ishmael, philosophical novel by Daniel Quinn, which became popular among radical environmentalist circles. The word “loosely” should be taken very seriously because the author himself has publicly distanced himself from the film. The plot begins when US State Department makes a deal with government of Rwanda under which Dr. Ethan Powell (played by Anthony Hopkins), renowned American anthropologist accused of murdering local park rangers, would be brought to prison hospital in Florida to establish whether he is mentally fit to stand trial. Powell, who might be executed if found guilty by Rwandan court, has never spoken a word since his capture. Task of establishing his mental health is given to Dr. Theo Calder (played by Cuba Gooding Jr.), young and ambitious psychiatrist who hopes that he would later write a book about the case and become famous. Powell, however, proves to be a tough nut to crack and Calder must use all of his skills to make him talk and explain his actions. Fortunately, Powell’s daughter Lynn (played by Maura Tierney). On the other hand, Calder’s work is impeded by prison hospital administration and staff that doesn’t like his progressive ideas about treating the criminally insane.
Instinct was advertised as powerful drama that explore the nature of evil within man’s psyche through conflict between two characters played by formidable “Oscar”-winning actors. Heads of Touchstone, studio behind it, hoped to get some Frankenstein-like mix of The Silence of the Lambs and One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest that would repeat those two films’ Oscar-winning success. What the audience got is collection of all the worst cliches, orgy of corny sentimentality and “politically correct” preachiness that would be extreme even for today’s “woke” Hollywood. Even such talented actors like Hopkins and Gooding were of little help here and their dignified presence only makes the flaws of this film stand out.
The worst thing about Instinct was utter hypocrisy and arrogance of the script writer Gerald Di Pego which appears to deliberately insults intelligence of every except most mentally deficient viewer. Part of the plot is, for example, set in 1994 Rwanda, but the film by some miraculous chance fails to address the genocide. Instead, the most important thing that happens and what ultimately leads Powell to his (in the eyes of the scriptwriter completely justified) act is endangerment of the gorillas he tried to protect. The film could have evaded a lot of problems if the plot had been set in different African country or Rwanda at different times; instead its makers explicitly tell that the lives of few apes matter less than lives of million human beings. They also implicitly try to absolve Clinton and his administration, known for going to war justified for humanitarian reasons, from washing their hands of one of the worst crimes at the end of 20th Century. Even worse is the idea of US government, which has managed to secure diplomatic coup by bringing famous anthropologist home, allowing such prominent prisoner being set in what appears to be hellhole where he is subjected to abuse; then again, this plays into Hollywood stereotypes based on US internal politics, where enlightened federal government get sabotaged by reactionary bigots at state level. When Powell finally begins to talk near end of the film, his views are predictably shallow and, apart of neo-Rousseauean story about need to return to Nature and abandon civilisation, also contain what would later become popular as Critical Rice Theory, namely idea that all evil in today’s world stems from mutant humans who became white. Yet, despite that, Di Pego script allows good black psychiatrist and his white daughter to flirt, but the interracial romance, according to hypocritical standards of 1990s Hollywood, will not be allowed. Hollywood in the past showed that it could advance noble causes of environmentalism, multi-racial society and various reforms, but it can also make awful films like Instinct that threaten all those achievements.
RATING: 1/10 (--)
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