Detective Nick Curran: Michael Douglas
Catherine Tramell: Sharon Stone
Gus: George Dzundza
Elisabeth 'Beth' Garner, Ph.D.: Jeanne Tripplehorn
Roxy: Leilani Sarelli
Captain Talcott: Chelcie Ross
Hazel Dobkins: Dorothy Malone
John Corelli: Wayne Knight
Dr. Lamott: Stephen Tobolowsky
In 1992, following Basic Instinct,
no actress was hotter in Hollywood than Sharon Stone after she crossed
her legs in the interrogation room to reveal whether cuffs and collar match.
An article in Empire about her concluded that "Basic Instinct 2 will almost
certainly be released in the future and will be reviewed in a future issue of
Empire", but that was never to happen.
Perhaps it's a good thing, because since so many sequels turn out to be duds,
if you can't get together as many of the original cast as possible and a follow-up
doesn't get scripted and filmed, then perhaps there wasn't the heart from all
the cast and crew to do it, as opposed to just the money-men wanting it, so
we've all been given a reprieve?
The film is a serial-killer thriller and begins with sex and violence in both
one fell swoop as rock star Johnny Boz is murdered with an icepick by a blonde, whose hair hides
her face, around the point of orgasm and the inspection of the sheets afterwards
causes cop Gus (George Dzundza), partner to Detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas),
to comment "He got off before he got offed!".
Johnny Boz gets the point.
The crux of the plot is that as Nick gets more involved in finding out whodunit,
so he gets more involved with the chief suspect, author Catherine
Tramell (Sharon Stone), a hot, sexy blonde who knows all the positions
in the Kama Sutra and has a penchant for silk scarves like the murderer as well
as tying up her men... just like the murderer. Oh, and of course the plot of
her last book centred around the exact same circumstances as the death at the
start of the film. Her next book, as a matter of fact, will be about a detective
who falls for the wrong woman... so she kills him.
While the dialogue is very cheesy at times the acting and direction is spot
on at all times, occasionally playing up to the nature of the script but
that's what helps the flow of the movie.
While Douglas could handle the role of a debonair detective at the time, as
the years pass by he's starting to resemble his father more and more, particularly
as his eyes appear to shrink into his skull and the lines around them increase.
Ms Stone was quite the vixen at the time, as well as in roles in
Total Recall and
Sliver, but while the work's still rolling in for her, she's past the
chance of starring in a similar role ten years on. Then again, Kim Cattrall's
at a similar age and she can still cut the mustard in Sex and the City
so there's always hope.
The rest of the cast includes the actress with the name that caused many a
giggle, Jeanne Tripplehorn, as Nick's ex-wife psychologist Beth and
as Catherine's girlfriend Roxy, Leilani Sarelli, wife of Miguel Ferrer
(Robocop's Bob Morton).
Gratuitous beaver shot.
The way the film has been made, there's no way you can watch it in anything
less than the original 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen ratio, which is how it's
been delivered here. It's a stunningly-shot film, the man with the visual flair
being director of photography Jan de Bont (director of Speed,
Speed 2 & Twister).
For those who've only ever watched the fullscreen version, you should know
that you can only get to find out who the murderer really is be seeing it
properly (look out for clues on a printer somewhere in a film).
On the bad side, there's a few print flecks and defects at times during the
film. Nothing too off-putting, but for a film that's only ten years old you
do have to wonder why this has happened.
The sound comes in three languages, but only English dialogue gets the best
of both worlds with Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1, the latter sounding better
of course with a memorable film score and staccato points when required, plus
decent sound effects in any action moments. As for the other languages, German
comes in DD5.1, but Spanish is surround-only.
Director Paul Verhoeven gives the public what they want...
The extras begin with the first featurette, Blonde Poison: The Making of
Basic Instinct, filmed last year and running for 24 minutes in 4:3 fullscreen
(and split into 20 unnamed chapters!) and letterboxed 2.35:1 clips of the film,
but with no comments at all from any cast members, bar a few words from Michael
Douglas recorded in 1991, leaving just the crew members to waffle on about it.
The briefly-named Featurette (in 16:9 anamorphic widescreen) is a 6½-minute extended trailer
with a few soundbites from the usual suspects and all a bit pointless. What's
of slightly more interest is a 5-minute montage of film, Cleaning Up
Basic Instinct, comparing 2.35:1 letterboxed film clips with 4:3 TV edits
showing the jumps in the soundtrack and picture as any strong language and
violence is poorly edited out, starting with Catherine not declaring "I wasn't
dating him, I was fucking him.", but "I wasn't dating him..." (change
of actress voice), "I was having sex with him", with some of these voice
edits appearing over the original film clip and with different voices as we used
to see regularly on BBC and ITV before they wised-up. Funny how they allow "pissed off",
but "son of a bitch" becomes "son of a buck" and he must say
"masturbate" instead of "jerk off".
There's a Storyboard for the Douglas/Stone love scene and the
original murder, brief storyboard comparisons with the film for the same love
scene, the car chase and the elevator murder, as well as Screen Tests
for Stone and Tripplehorn. None of the extras in this section go beyond a
few minutes apiece though and once you've seen them, you'll rarely go back to
them.
There are scores of stills in the Photo Gallery, a 2-minute Theatrical
Trailer in 16:9 anamorphic widescreen - the one set to the thumping techno
beat which I liked and as well as it containing all the cliches in one go, it
also swaps round two consecutive lines of dialogue in the interrogation room
so now when Stone says "It's nice", it appears to be the answer to
Douglas' next question, "You like playing games, don't you?". Coming
next is a 30-second Teaser Trailer narrated by Don La Fontaine.
Yes, that man with the deep voice who does all the movie trailers.
There are also 2 Audio Commentaries: one from director Verhoeven
and director of photography Jan de Bont (director of Speed,
Speed 2 & Twister),
with a second from feministic critic Camille Paglia.
The extras seem plenty at first, but when you look through them you find there's
not as much there as meets the eye, so don't justify the price tag and most
of them could have been fitted onto the first disc if the non-English language
soundtracks had been dumped as well as the redundant "feministic critic"
audio commentary.
The disc contains 33 chapters, subtitles in English, Spanish, Dutch,
German, Portuguese and Turkish and the main menu feature music from the film
with a short piece of animation based around an ice block, with more between
menus.
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
