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Instinct
USA 1999
Reviewed by Ken Hollings
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Florida, the present. Psychiatric resident Theo Caulder is selected to evaluate the mental competence of anthropologist Ethan Powell to stand trial for murder. Powell has been extradited from Rwanda where he has already served a year in prison for killing and wounding members of a search party sent to find him. Having spent two years in the jungle living among the gorillas, Powell displays an affinity with animals and responds violently to other humans. He has been completely silent since his arrest.
Caulder's first attempts to get him to talk are frustrated by the brutal methods employed at the correctional facility where Powell is being held. He seeks help from Powell's daughter who describes how her father's obsession with gorillas left little room for his own family. Eventually Powell speaks, offering Caulder insights into his life with the apes, whose company he found far superior to human society. He also reveals he attacked his rescuers only after they had opened fire on the gorillas, slaughtering several of them. Just before his trial, however, Powell assaults a guard who has been terrorising a fellow inmate and then withdraws into silence again. Using a pen unwittingly supplied by Caulder, Powell escapes and is last seen wandering alone through the jungle.
Review
With a title sequence that contrasts lush scenes of gorillas ruminating peacefully in their green jungle habitat with dank images of human captivity as Powell is manacled for extradition to the US, Instinct has its arguments locked and loaded pretty much from the start. Human society, exemplified this time by the demands and strictures of the Florida penal system, is once more found wanting compared with the order and wonder of the natural world. (Director Jon Turteltaub and writer Gerald DiPego previously collaborated on the cod-mystical Phenomenon.)
With his customary subtle authority Anthony Hopkins plays Powell, a highly educated scientist who has returned from the wilderness having become a violent representative of what state-appointed shrink Caulder describes as "ungoverned man", a noble savage responsible for clubbing to death two fellow humans and wounding three more. Florida being one of the first states to reintroduce the death penalty for murder nearly 20 years ago, a lot more than Powell's liberty is at stake. A stooped, shuffling figure in drab prison fatigues and heavy restraints, his features partially obscured by a grizzled beard and straggling, unkempt locks, Powell bears an alarming resemblance to Charles Manson on his way to prison in 1971.
The similarities don't end there. Caulder's cautious probings of Powell's psyche quickly become philosophical exchanges in which Powell imparts to his unwilling pupil lessons that could have come straight from the Book of Charlie. The vast majority of humanity are "takers", exploiting and abusing the world around them. Freedom and control are nothing but illusions, a point which Powell demonstrates forcibly by threatening to break Caulder's neck with his bare hands. Following the doubts about screen violence which he expressed after his performance as serial killer Hannibal Lecter, Hopkins is back playing a kinder, gentler sociopath.
But what happens when we get in touch with our inner gorilla? More importantly, what happens when we don't? If the Harmony Bay correctional facility is a stark cypher for modern society, it is one manifestly devoid of women. In fact, there are only two female characters of any substance in the entire movie: Powell's daughter, whom he finally accepts; and a female gorilla who invites Powell to share in the nurturing of her baby and is promptly shot by park rangers for her trouble. Instinct depicts the gorillas existing happily within a benign patriarchy watched over by a powerful male leader, but you never see how this position is maintained or challenged within the group. A mother defending her child is about as ugly as it gets. Meanwhile, the Harmony Bay inmates are shown fighting over playing cards, inflicting indiscriminate injury upon themselves and each other. All in all, Instinct comes across as an updated version of Bambi (1942). Made at a time when gorillas were still chasing the Ritz Brothers around haunted houses, Disney's animated feature warned audiences that "man has entered the forest" with a similar, if less extreme, blend of sentiment and brutality. Even the wordless choruses Danny Elfman uses so effectively on the soundtrack here carry awestruck echoes of Frank Churchill and Edward Plumb's Bambi score. From cartoon deer to animatronic gorillas, however beautifully designed, is only a small step.
Cuba Gooding Jr brings a brash, kinetic fun to his portrayal of Caulder, whether bluffing a patient into doubting her own paranoiac delusions, laughing too loudly at a colleague's jokes or addressing a barman by his first name. But the demands of the plot gradually erode his position, leaving him by the end a passive accomplice to Powell's escape. Like Hannibal Lecter before him, Powell has to disappear because there is nowhere left for him, or the story, to go. But whereas the highly cultured Lecter only needed the top from a psychiatrist's pen to attain his freedom, the more primitive Powell now requires the whole thing.
Credits
- Producers
- Michael Taylor
- Barbara Boyle
- Screenplay/Screen Story
- Gerald DiPego
- Suggested by the novel Ishmael by
- Daniel Quinn
- Director of Photography
- Philippe Rousselot
- Editor
- Richard Francis-Bruce
- Production Designer
- Garreth Stover
- Music/Score Producer
- Danny Elfman
- ©Spyglass Entertainment Group, L.P.
- Production Companies
- A Touchstone Pictures/Spyglass Entertainment presentation
- Executive Producers
- Wolfgang Petersen
- Gail Katz
- Co-producers
- Richard Lerner
- Brian Doubleday
- Christina Steinberg
- Production Supervisor
- Yvonne Yaconelli
- Production Controller
- Allen E. Taylor
- Production Co-ordinators
- Kristeen Olson
- Jamaican Unit:
- Montez Monroe
- Unit Production Manager
- Bill Johnson
- Unit Managers
- Jamaican Unit:
- Natalie Thompson
- Maxine Walters
- Location Managers
- Valerie Schields
- Alan Victor Levi
- Jamaican Unit:
- Wayne Sinclair
- Assistant Directors
- William M. Elvin
- Andrew Bernstein
- Dylan K. Massin
- Script Supervisor
- Thomas Johnston
- Casting
- Renée Rousselot
- ADR Voice:
- Barbara Harris
- Orlando:
- Tanya Sullivan
- Aerial Photography
- David Nowell
- Camera Operators
- Anastas Michos
- Ted Morris
- Additional:
- Wally Pfister
- Visual Effects
- Dream Quest Images
- Visual Effects Supervisor:
- Jeffrey Burks
- Visual Effects Producer:
- Erika Wangberg Burton
- Production Co-ordinator:
- Kathryn Liotta-Couture
- Digital
- Compositing Supervisor:
- Rory Hinnen
- Compositors:
- Jeff Olm
- Gina Warr-Lawes
- Amy Pfaffinger
- John Huikku
- Animators:
- Steward Burris
- Brian Lutge
- Teresa Williams
- Visual Effects Editor:
- Daniel Arkin
- Special Effects
- Co-ordinator:
- James L. Roberts
- Foreman:
- Bruce E. Merlin
- Modelmaker
- Mark Bradley
- Art Directors
- Chris Cornwell
- Jamaican Unit:
- Samantha Gore
- Set Designers
- Mark E. Garner
- Stéphanie S. Girard
- Set Decorator
- Larry Dias
- Illustrators
- James Clyne
- Darryl Henley
- Scenic Artist
- Todd Bray
- Costume Designer
- Jill Ohanneson
- Costume Supervisor
- John Casey
- Make-up Supervision
- John Blake
- Special Character Effects
- Stan Winston
- Gorillas Design/Creation
- Stan Winston Studio
- Effects Supervisors:
- Shane Mahan
- J. Allan Scott
- Co-supervisors:
- Greg Figiel
- Joey Orosco
- John Rosengrant
- Key Artists:
- Richie Alonzo
- Christopher Swift
- Bill Basso
- Paul Mejias
- Mark Jurinko
- Jason Matthews
- Scott Stoddard
- Hair Department Supervisor:
- Stuart Artingstall
- Hair Department:
- Ursula Ward
- Lynne Watson
- Michael Ornelaz
- Rob Phillips
- Connie Cadwell
- Jill Crosby
- Stacie Figueroa
- Kelly Kernaghan
- Christine Stahl
- Key Animatronic Design:
- Kirk Skodis
- Jeff Edwards
- Dave Covarrubias
- Animatronic Design:
- Bob Mano
- Al Sousa
- Rich Haugen
- Brian Namanny
- Jon Dawe
- Tim Nordella
- Lloyd Ball
- Fabrication Department Supervisor:
- Karen Mason
- Fabrication Department:
- Beth Hathaway
- Judy Bowerman
- Lynette Eklund
- Alon Dori
- Electronic Design:
- Roderick Khachatoorian
- Kurt Herbel
- Emery Brown
- Glenn Derry
- Art/Mold Technical Department
- Supervisor:
- Tony McCray
- Crew:
- Darin Bouyssou
- Lindsay MacGowan
- Keith Marbory
- Trevor Hensley
- Kevin McTurk
- Lance Gilmer
- Joe Reader
- Eric Ostroff
- Barry Crane
- Ian Stevenson
- Lou Diaz
- Mike Harper
- Jim Charmatz
- David Monzingo
- John Calpin
- Executive in Charge of Operation:
- Tara Meaney-Crocitto
- Production Co-ordinator:
- Stiles White
- Project Photographer:
- Chuck Zlotnick
- Production Liaison:
- Tate Taylor
- Hairstylist
- Daniel Curet
- Title Design
- Brian King
- Titles/Opticals
- Buena Vista Imaging
- Orchestra Conductor
- Pete Anthony
- Orchestrations
- Steve Bartek
- David Slonaker
- Executive in Charge of Music, The Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group
- Kathy Nelson
- Supervising Music Editor
- Bob Badami
- Music Editor
- Jennifer Nash
- Score Recordist/Mixer
- Shawn Murphy
- Midi Preparation/Supervision
- Marc Mann
- Primate Choreographer
- Gorilla Unit:
- Peter Elliott
- Sound Mixer
- Peter J. Devlin
- Re-recording Mixers
- Terry Porter
- Mel Metcalfe
- Dean A. Zupancic
- Additional Audio
- Mark Ormandy
- Tucker Bills
- Recordists
- Judy Nord
- 2nd:
- Jeannette Cremarosa
- Supervising Sound Editors
- Kelly Cabral
- Wylie Stateman
- Dialogue Editors
- Lauren Stephens
- Kimaree Long
- Sound Effects Design
- Jon Title
- Sound Effects Editors
- Hector Gika
- Scott Sanders
- ADR
- Editor:
- Jennifer Mann
- Foley
- Artists:
- Jeff Wilhoit
- Jimmy Moriana
- Recordist:
- J.C. Lucas
- Mixer:
- David Alstadter
- Editors:
- Kelly Oxford
- Craig Jaeger
- Prison Technical Adviser
- Jonathan O'Hern
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- Jim Vickers
- Animal Wrangler
- Michael Alexander
- Helicopter Pilot
- Robert 'Bobby Z' Zajonc
- Cast
- Anthony Hopkins
- Ethan Powell
- Cuba Gooding Jr
- Theo Caulder
- Donald Sutherland
- Ben Hillard
- Maura Tierney
- Lyn Powell
- George Dzundza
- Dr John Murray
- John Ashton
- Guard Dacks
- John Aylward
- Warden Keefer
- Thomas Q. Morris
- Pete
- Doug Spinuzza
- Nicko
- Paul Bates
- Bluto
- Rex Linn
- Guard Alan
- Rod McLachlan
- Anderson, guard
- Kurt Smildsin
- Jim Coleman
- guards
- Tracey Ellis
- Annie
- Kim Ingram
- Lester Rodman
- Paul Collins
- Tom Hanley
- Marc Macaulay
- Foley
- Jim Grimshaw
- Boaz
- Gary Bristow
- federal marshal
- Rus Blackwell
- Bruce Borgan
- government aides
- Louanne Stephens
- Marjorie Powell
- Ajgie Kirkland
- Captain Kagona
- Chike Kani Omo
- David
- Christopher John Harris
- William
- Ivonne Coll
- Doctor Marquez
- Pat McNamara
- Doctor Josephson
- Vivienne Sendaydiego
- Catherine
- Roger Floyd
- Gilbert
- Dave Deever
- man in car
- Tim Goodwin
- helmet man
- Alex City
- Jimmy Dipisa
- Manwell Hendrix
- Kevin McNally
- Kevin Moore
- Joe Tacke
- Bertram Wallace
- prisoners
- John Travis
- Mike, bartender
- David Anthony
- John Munro Cameron
- Jay Caputo
- Garon Michael
- Misty Rosas
- David St. Pierre
- Verne Troyer
- gorilla performers
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- Buena Vista International (UK)
- 11,139 feet
- 123 minutes 46 seconds
- SDDS/Dolby digital/Digital DTS sound
- In Colour
- Prints by
- Technicolor
- Anamorphic [Panavision]