Nobody’s Sorry

By Christina Harlin, your Fearless Young Orphan

Basic Instinct 2 (2006)

Directed by Michael Caton-Jones

Is this film noir? I have no idea. I guess we’ll see soon. Why include it here, then? We watched Basic Instinct (1992) as a contender for neo-noir. While it barely scraped into the genre with a 72% on the Noir Scoire, it still featured Sharon Stone as one of the most outrageously obvious femme fatales in film history. Looking for a dangerous woman? Catherine Trammell is it. People she knows die in droves. Is she actually killing them? I suppose that is the question, so screw you, Hamlet.

Anyway, about fifteen years later, someone decided that making a sequel was a good idea, putting Sharon Stone right back in the interview chair (haha) as Catherine. Since the film is ten years old (and doesn’t have an infamous money- shot like the original) the movie seems to be mostly recalled as a cash-grabbing crappy film. It sits with a paltry 7% score on RottenTomatoes.com – a score I think is totally undeserved. Despite all the negativity, there is something I have never forgotten. My favorite film critic, the late and much-missed Roger Ebert, reviewed the film. He gave it only 1 ½ stars, but in his concluding paragraph said, “My 1-1/2-star rating is like a cold shower, designed to take my mind away from giving it four stars.” I loved him for admitting that sometimes, a bawdily terrible film can be practically perfect within its own tawdry genre. And, I know exactly what he means. Basic Instinct 2 may be a bad movie carrying a ridiculous plot, acting, dialog, and resolution altogether, but I was fascinated by it, never bored for a moment. As a matter of fact, I liked it one hell of a lot more than I liked the original Basic Instinct, possibly because this one doesn’t feature Michael Douglas as the sleaziest jackwad ever to walk a film. Let me just admit something right out, and you can go ahead and judge me:

I had a great time watching this. I enjoyed the brassy bullshit of Catherine Trammell, a woman whose eyes alone say, “I am going to wreck your life” and then you let it happen because you cannot help yourself. I was actually curious about how they were going to explain the preposterous plot. Well, yeah: much like its vaguely-ended predecessor, Basic Instinct 2 gives at least three possible explanations for the crimes, and leaves it to us to decide which one really happened. I liked the architecture, the clothes, the cars, the in-your-face lustiness, the sex so dirty and angry that it seems to defeat its own purpose. Sometimes it is fun to watch trash, and this film is top-notch trash.

Fifteen years after the close of Basic Instinct, Catherine remains every bit as gorgeous, unapologetic, and sexually aggressive as she ever was. Now living in London, she continues writing trashy crime novels. She remains surrounded by people with really short life spans. Maybe she’s the one who kills them, or maybe she is simply drawn to people of a certain sort, those who seem to be living on a precarious edge anyway. Her life is full of drugs and sex and violence, just like her books.

In the opening of the film, she is suspected in the death of a sports star. The man died when Catherine was practicing some unsafe driving and plowed her car off a pier and into a lake. We’re with her during the crash and, aside from driving like a lunatic, she didn’t seem to be intentionally trying to kill the guy. There’s only so much time to get out of a sinking car. That’s not how driving works. When it becomes clear that trying anything further to save him will probably mean killing them both, she chooses her own life and swims away.

Nevertheless, this requires some investigation because as we all know, this is not the first time someone has died within close proximity to our girl Catherine. Scotland Yard brings her in ostensibly because she simply pisses them off. She’s always smoking and being sassy. There is much talk about how naughty she is and then they call in a psychiatrist, Michael Glass (David Morrissey) to evaluate her mental state. This is because Catherine needs someone to drive mad with lust, and a hot doctor who thinks she’s dangerous is probably a perfect target. He diagnoses her with a sexy-sounding condition called “risk addiction”. Like most women, Catherine digs it when someone tries to figure her out and comes up with something cool, so she begs him to become her therapist so she can prowl around his office half-naked making lewd suggestions until the poor guy is just about to scream.

Plot, plot, plot. There’s no lack of it. Going into much detail would make my head hurt, so I’ll try to hit the high points. There are subsequent murders: a troublesome journalist who is having an affair with Dr. Glass’s ex-wife, then the ex-wife. Catherine says that nosy Detective Washburn is doing it; the man has a checkered past and wants to get even with Catherine for not sleeping with him. Detective Washburn, of course, says Catherine is the killer. They both play off Dr. Glass until he’s uncertain who to trust. Nevertheless, he’s pretty sure who he wants to bang. That would be Catherine. But Dr. Glass is not without his own problems. Once before he had a patient go completely mental and commit a murder/suicide on Glass’s watch; now up for a prestigious position, he doesn’t need another unpredictable client screwing things up. But speaking of screwing . . .

Our anti-hero: To be perfectly honest, Catherine Trammell would be the anti- hero if she was the least bit flawed or ever had a lack of control. She’s the femme fatale as leading lady, however, and everything she does is perfectly intentional. Because of this, our anti-hero must be psychiatrist Michael Glass, who might not be as honorable a man as he’d like to think. He’s made mistakes in the past for the sake of his reputation, and in our story, makes the enormously boneheaded mistake of agreeing to be Catherine Trammell’s shrink. But speaking of boneheaded . . . 8/10 As Played by: David Morrissey. He has not much to do except glare at Catherine, and by proxy, glare at everyone else. His character does get some moments of humanity when Morrissey allows himself a smile or a bit of self-deprecating humor, so we know he’s not made of stone. 7/10

The femme fatale: Catherine You know, that’s not how chairs work, either. Trammell. She’s the poster girl for shameless sexual freedom, but more than that, even becoming her friend (assuming she ever actually makes friends) seems to put life at risk. To be close to this flame, a lot of moths have died. 10/10

As played by: Sharon Stone. Her performance is over-the-top, of course, and yet she’s sharp and brassy, immersed in the role and completely unabashed about playing the part. It’s hard to not respond to her level of commitment. 10/10

The villain: Well who the hell knows? We have a laundry list of suspects and no definite answers in the end. Let’s just say that this is one of those films in which no one is innocent. Life around Catherine Trammell is short and wild. Is that her fault, or just an unfortunate side-effect? 8/10

As played by: Sharon Stone and David Morrissey are busy doing their own things, and whether you call the performances good or bad, they’re working. David Thewlis as rumpled Detective Washburn isn’t given a chance to do much except grouse. 8/10

The crime: Rather a lot of murders, by the end of the story. The murders themselves do not seem like the focus of the tension, however. They are plot devices meant to keep the ball in the air until Catherine’s next unbelievable stunt. But speaking of balls in the air . . . 6/10 The location: A London filled with the magnificent architecture of wealth and wretched excess. More than a movie about shadows, this is a movie about glaring bright light. 5/10

The mood: Film noir requires a feeling of no choices, or bad choices, desperate circumstances or terrible frustration. Dr. Glass is certainly frustrated, but there’s no one in this movie who doesn’t pretty much deserve to be where they are. For the most part, they seem to enjoy being there, too. Rather than characters fighting to free themselves, these characters are mostly determined to sink further into the mire. That’s a difference due to decade: in the 1940s, filmmakers had to make like no one save criminals really wanted to live a life of being so very naughty – and in the end, they had to pay for it. Any more, the lifestyles of those who aspire to be like Catherine Trammell sound like fantasy material. 5/10

The sex factor: As sordid as all this sounds, it’s not nearly as sleazy as was the original and there is (or it seemed to me) far less actual sex on screen. Oh, don’t worry, there’s still plenty, but it’s more meaningful; it’s more than just a couple of bodies going through the motions. There is actual motivation behind the act itself, and real, deadly desire too. I was actually waiting for the moment when Glass would finally give in to the inevitable. David Morrissey exudes a definite control and magnetism, and it is no wonder that Catherine wants to break him. Does he want to break her? Well duh. At the film’s conclusion, I appreciated the implication that he might be one man she’d be willing to wait for. 9/10

Overall Noir Scoire: 76% - a somewhat better Noir Scoire than the original. This movie is far more fun to watch, too. I’m starting to believe I’ve been seduced too.