14 years later we got a sequel to Basic Instinct. It was in development as far back as 2000 and was finally shot in 2005 and released in 2006. It seems the main reason why production was held up for so long was because they couldn’t find a suitable male lead. Michael Douglas was completely out of the picture so who do you get? I would’ve courted James Spader but apparently he wasn’t even considered.
Who we got was David Morrissey (The Other Boleyn Girl). I haven’t seen anything he’s been in but he does alright here. I mean he’s no Michael Douglas and his character, Michael Glass, is like a less cool Nick Curran. The main difference between them is that Glass tries to resist Catherine Tramell’s charm the whole way through instead of giving in to it and trying to play her own game against her like Curran did. Glass isn’t a cop either, he’s a psychiatrist so he doesn’t have a badass attitude and is kinda wimpy. But what was cool to see was how a different personality reacts to Tramell’s seduction and how she plays with them differently. Glass is confused the entire movie and doesn’t know how to handle her so Tramell has to guide him more than she did Curran.
And this leads me to what I think is the biggest flaw in the picture. They basically changed the roles around for this one and instead of the cop being the focus it’s the psychiatrist. But they both have shady pasts like the first one. Glass possibly could have prevented a murder some years ago because he knew his patient was dangerous. David Thewlis (The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) plays the cop, Roy Washburn, and he might have falsified evidence and harassed witnesses in the past. So like the first one we’re set up with two people that we don’t totally trust. But having the psychiatrist be the main guy in this one leaves us with a person that’s more rational and doesn’t exhibit the do-what-it-takes-to-nab-the-scumbag attitude like Washburn does. Glass tries to analyze the situation and he talks to his psychiatrist friends for their opinion. That’s way less exciting than something like Nick Curran getting chewed out by his superior officer for getting involved in a car chase resulting in the death of one of Tramell’s lovers.
Also, Sharon Stone gives a worse performance than in the first one. Catherine Tramell seems kinda lost like she hasn’t quite worked out the details in her grand scheme so in the meantime she cranks up the flirtatious conversation with plenty of innuendos ‘n shit. In this one she seems like more of a real person which oddly doesn’t work as well. I think this is because she comes off as less formidable. There isn’t the threat of an ice pick killer lurking this time. Instead we open with Catherine getting fingered by a soccer player (or footballer as this one is set in London) while she drives a sports car at 100 mph. Good thing London has that strict policy of not letting people out at night as there isn’t a single person or car on the road ‘cause she could’ve hurt someone. She ends up crashing the car in a spectacular fashion by going through a glass sign and into the Thames River. This was probably my favorite part of the movie and gave me hope that this one was gonna be great. Unfortunately nothing that exciting happens again. After the crash Catherine is her usual cold blooded self but it almost immediately gives way to someone that’s a less threatening version. In the first movie there was always an element of danger whether it was the car chase that Catherine takes Nick on, Catherine’s crazy girlfriend Roxy or her giving the impression that she was going to kill Nick while they were having sex. That last part they do try to recreate as well as some other things like Catherine blowing off the cops during an interrogation but I just didn’t get sucked into her act.
Now I know this is gonna sound pig-headed but I think it’s because Sharon Stone just got too old. She wears a lot more makeup and revealing clothing than she did the first time as if to cover her face and have you focus more on her body. Tramell comes off more like Samantha Jones from Sex and the City in this one. She’s a tough broad that likes to have sex and use her sex appeal to lure younger men in. I can’t help but think that they took a cue from this character that’s similar in some ways and tried to model how the new Catherine Tramell handles herself after her. They even have the same haircut.
But I do think that the filmmakers tried to make a worthy sequel. This doesn’t feel half assed or churned out. I really think they tried hard to capture the same feeling and levels of excitement and danger as the first one. Well, they didn’t do it. In my Basic Instinct review I mentioned that Catherine Tramell isn’t a very complex character and I think this movie backs that theory up. I said that there isn’t all that much to Nick Curran either but when you bring the two together it works (the ol’ two sides of the same coin argument could me made). And when you take away one of those pieces then you get this film. Catherine Tramell can’t take over a movie on her own and this shows that. Glass isn’t really up to playing Catherine’s game and at the end of the movie you see that she has to tell him what to do because he wouldn’t have done it on his own. She didn’t have to do that with Nick because she knew that he was a man of action and would make certain assumptions and decisions on his own. Here Catherine has to literally spell out where she wants Glass to go and what she wants him to do. I can understand why they took so long to hunt for just the right male lead because he needs to help bring this picture together in a big way. But the problem runs deeper than just finding a badass enough guy for the role because as I stated before, they switched the roles of cop and psychiatrist and that move doesn’t work.
The filmmakers tried to basically do the same movie again instead of going in a different direction. I can’t blame them ‘cause I don’t know what else you would do with Catherine Tramell besides having her kill some people again. The most interesting thing that I took away from this one is that they do mention very briefly stuff that happened in the first film. Glass called up Nick’s superior officer (off screen), Phil Walker (Denis Arndt), to find out some info on Catherine and he confronts her about it. Walker told him that two detectives were murdered along with a rocker named Johnny Boz back in the U.S. Catherine admits right there to killing Johhny but that’s not what’s interesting because we assumed that all along anyway. The interesting part is they say that only two detectives were killed. If you remember the two are the internal affairs cop, Nilsen, and Nick’s partner, Gus. That means that Nick wasn’t killed after the credits rolled at the end of the first film. So Nick is still kickin’ around somewhere in San Francisco.
Unless you’re a huge fan of Basic Instinct 1 then there’s no need to bother with this one. Even though it’s totally independent from its predecessor it has that sequel feel to it. That feeling that this was a good idea once but the way it was redone doesn’t work very well.
Sex Scenes: Three and a half. The half is the fingering scene at the beginning. There’s a lot more sex talk in this one too and that made it feel like a dirtier movie even though there’s one less sex scene and no after sex scenes.
After Sex Scenes: Like I said, none.
Strange Cameos: Charlotte Rampling plays Glass’ friend and fellow psychiatrist and she starred in Orca, the most blatant and awesome Jaws rip off ever except this creature is way more destructive. I mean this killer whale sets a whole town on fire. It’s a pretty cool movie and worth checking out. Oh and Rampling was also in Angel Heart. That one doesn’t have anything to do with sharks or whales though.
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