Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 21, 1992 TAG: 9203210286
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHRIS GLADDEN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
This sexually charged thriller has been generating a lot of publicity this week, just in time for its release. It's no secret now that its sex scenes had to be trimmed to receive an R rating. And gay groups have been protesting its treatment of lesbianism.
There's some foundation to all the hoopla, but there's really nothing in the movie that should be taken seriously. It's a lurid - and entertaining if your tastes run that way - mystery.
Well, ultimately the only real mystery is why Joe Eszterhas's script commanded $3 million. Implausibilities abound in this homage to the film noir genre. Every woman in the movie is gay or bisexual and has murdered relatives in her past. For that matter, everyone seems to have relatives who have died untimely deaths. All the red herrings and false leads really add up to nothing more than misdirection and the convenience of Eszterhas' six-figure script.
But director Paul Verhoeven approaches the material with considerable style. The director of "RoboCop" will do anything to keep the movie from dragging, and he turns up the sexual thermostat as often as the ratings board will allow.
The movie begins with one of the most attention-grabbing opening scenes since "Betty Blue."
From that, we learn that a woman killer who likes to mix murder and sex is on the loose in San Francisco.
The leading suspect is Catherine Tramell, played with sluttish elan by Sharon Stone.
Catherine is a rich novelist whose latest book is plotted very much like the recent murder. She's rich and gorgeous and completely uninhibited when it comes to sex and drugs.
She's a modern-day Circe who turns men into dumbstruck animals with a cross of her shapely legs.
Homicide detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas), a tormented type of guy who is dealing with a lot of personal and professional problems, is sure she's the murderer. He's also intrigued by her and quickly starts thinking with a portion of his anatomy that's far removed from his brain. Such is her considerable power over men that Nick starts planning to settle down and have kids with the devoutly decadent Ms. Tramell. Yeah, right. Sometimes it's difficult to tell whether the humor here is intentional or unintentional.
The baroque script has big question marks and plenty of dubious psychological motivations. But the performances and Verhoeven's direction bring a lot of conviction to the material.
The result is a high-gloss, low-down guilty pleasure that doesn't make much sense but is so relentlessly out on the edge that it's never boring. `Basic Instinct': **1/2
A Tri-Star release at Salem Valley 8 (389-0444) and Tanglewood Mall Cinema (989-6165). Rated R for violence and extremely strong sexual content; 127 minutes.
by CNB