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Making the best of a screenplay by Gerald DiPego (Message In a Bottle and Phenomenon) that oozes with the immediately gratifying oohs and ahs of wholesale self-discovery, director John Turteltaub skilfully takes these recycled ruminations and democratically hops from one scholastic discipline to the next, making a major psychological breakthrough here, positing a groundbreaking primatological theory there. But while these instant revelations aren't exactly destined to set the academic world on fire, an exemplary cast engagingly experiences them, the likes of which you rarely see in a movie of such otherwise mediocre prospects.
Leading these thespians to the rescue is Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Ethan Powell, renegade scholar, convicted murderer, and the film's resident wild man. Living among the gorillas until he was imprisoned for killing two African park-rangers, the former University of Miami professor hasn't spoken since his capture. But the real crime is how easily Sir Anthony manipulates us. While he's not quite Olivier, he's certainly in the same league.
Naturally, the mad scientist is very complex. But in our well-seasoned, movie-audience optimism, we somehow suspect that, beyond his murderous treachery, this self-proclaimed missing link is really the ultimate humanist; that there is a method to his anti-social madness. Therefore, it only follows that he must be unravelled by a bright and innocent scholar; and, as it just so happens, standing ready to evaluate the anthropologist for the Federal authorities in Miami when he is repatriated from Rwanda to the United States, and just perhaps pen a best-selling book in the bargain, is Cuba Gooding, Jr. as Dr. Theo Caulder. Mr. Gooding is no slouch in the acting department either, firming up his reputation here by vaulting from boisterous star athlete in Jerry McGuire to contemplative physician.
The talented ingenue as philosophical conduit is not a new dramatic mechanism in the deciphering of Mr. Hopkins's estimable array of dangerous and provocative eccentrics. Mr. Gooding's Theo Caulder is to Dr. Ethan Powell as Jody Foster's Clarice Starling was to Hannibal Lecter (Silence Of The Lambs). The chemistry between Messrs. Hopkins and Gooding is splendidly intriguing, providing for a captivating interaction that often keeps things surprising, even when the veritable shopping cart of contrived sub-plots manifests too transparent.
As writer DiPego has it, young Dr. Caulder is going to have to pay for his chance at Shrinkdom's brass ring. You see, the overcrowded jail's only other psychiatrist, effectively portrayed by an overweight George Dzunda, is pitifully reminiscent of Gene Lockhart's Louie, the ship's sad-sack doc in The Sea Wolf. Hence, in order to have an exclusive with the penitentiary's most famous inmate, the rules of derivative filmmaking dictate that Gooding's bright-eyed and bushy-tailed psychiatrist must also attend to the prison's creatively imagined assortment of loonies. Eureka! Not only do you get a meditation on civilised vs. primitive man, but a prison picture as well.
It figures. Harmony Bay, the Florida maximum-security prison where Professor Powell is transferred to, is a stereotypical bedlam, a ready-packaged argument for penal reform replete with the vilest blackguard (John Ashton) as its head turnkey. Alas, add another sub-text to the doings, because it looks like the time is right for a young reformer, assuming young Caulder dares buck the overwhelming powers that be.
And while the filmmakers are piling on the plots, consider the well-scrubbed family and pretty suburban ranch home Dr. Powell forsook for his mid-life swing on the vine; amazing, to what lengths some guys will go just to get out of the house. In any case, Maura Tierney gains bona fide sympathy as the long-suffering adult daughter who, contrary to her better judgement, dreams of one day regaining her dear old, wayward dad. Caulder employs pictures from this past life like flash cards, hoping to gain entrance into his subject's obviously tormented psyche. The relationship that ultimately evolves (call it 'The Harmony Bay Redemption,' if you will) becomes a morale-boosting cause celebre among the beleaguered inmates. The control freak jailers are miffed.
As the doctors square off, predictably forming a guarded respect for each other, listen carefully; you can almost hear the song lyrics,"....getting to know you, getting to know all about you." But hey, who's analysing whom here? The indignant, chest-beating iconoclast in chains has a harsh lesson or two to impart himself. But not before the movie inconsistently stoops to several spates of shameless sensationalism via Dr. Powell's explosive behaviour. Possessing superhuman strength, he is the noble savage only when it pleases the film's more idealistic, er, instincts, and a regular Tasmanian devil when the dearth of action selfishly calls for some frightening and dangerously violent outbursts.
When Powell isn't maniacally throttling his therapist, the docs cogitate every philosophical question short of how many angels can you fit on the head of a pin? And through their high-minded meditations, the film indulges in its big conceit: that animals instinctively know the rules of behaviour; while man, on the other hand, having fallen from grace some 10,000 years ago when he bit the apple and opted in favour of civilisation, hasn't a clue.
Proffering this pop ecology, Instinct unfairly cuts an intellectual corner and panders to the element in us that doesn't feel very good about being human. It's an interesting bit of emotional sophistry, a fantasy that tugs at the heartstrings and claims the quest for humankind's lost innocence as its mission. But it's wrongheaded, a mere ploy used in movies to sway emotion in the absence of solid arguments. Possessing no original soul of its own, Instinct takes this monkey see, monkey do route, assuring very little to go ape over.
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