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Basic Instinct 2Claidia PuigIn Basic Instinct 2, Sharon Stone's sexy psycho-killer asks a psychiatrist "You know how some guys are into blondes and some guys are into killers?" Well, maybe. But few people are into bad sequels that were made more than a decade too late. No doubt Stone was banking on the double whammy her sultry blond murderess offers. But some things are so much a product of their time, they simply can't be resuscitated. The 1992 phenomenon was creepy, tense and sexually charged in a bold yet tawdry way. This sequel lacks even a shred of those elements. The plot has no credibility. The goings-on are not suspenseful, despite a series of gory slayings. A host of smart people (psychiatrists, journalists, detectives, eminent legal minds) falls under the spell of Stone's Catherine Tramell. Clearly middle-aged, she assumes an aggressively sexy stance that seems a tad ridiculous. Despite her notorious reputation, these fine folks befriend her. We're supposed to believe it's because of her prodigious intellect and charms. Yet that beautiful mind of hers just wrings chuckles from viewers. Stone's line readings are so brassily over-the-top and have such a forced seductive quality that they sound hilarious. Her voice-over narration, read from one of her character's pulpy novels, is one example: "She dressed carefully. She liked to be well dressed when she killed." Another killer Stone line: "Don't take it so hard. Even Oedipus didn't see his mother coming." Stone and the moody, atmospheric music are back from the first movie, but the score does a more effective job of conveying coiled, alluring menace than Stone does. Clearly, this was a vanity project for the actress, who is still in top shape - though she shows less than she did in her first go-round. The setting this time around is London, but Stone's privileged American character seemed more at home in San Francisco, where the first movie was set. A top criminal psychiatrist (David Morrissey) is asked by a Scotland Yard detective (David Thewlis) to evaluate Tramell after a soccer star is found dead. Ignoring the advice of his mentor (Charlotte Rampling), the good doctor is drawn into Tramell's intricate web of lies, as well as into her expensively appointed boudoir. The movie's most natural performance belongs to Thewlis. Most of the supporting characters, especially Morrissey and Rampling, seem stilted, as if embarrassed to be reciting the painfully bad dialogue by Leora Barish and Henry Bean. Director Paul Verhoeven directed the first film with more of a sense of erotic tension than Michael Caton-Jones musters here.
A Scotland Yard detective who tries to warn away the obsessed psychiatrist sums up this movie best: "She's not worth it."
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