basic instinct [1992]

poet michael lally [you can find his blog via the links on the right] was also a working actor.  he was in this film.  so when i saw this on the TV the other night i watched it only for the parts lally played as a detective.  but this movie stuck in my craw.  in 1992 i was a returning student and befriended an even older student.  he was also a poet and was a great guy.  we saw this movie together in the theater.  when the lights came up i asked him what he thought.  my friend, the older student, said, i liked it.

let me tell you what i think of the pic.  it stinks.  awful tripe.  worse than awful.  it is like an ancient piece of gum you step on the sidewalk, sticky, gooey, and refuses to yield to your attempts to scrape it off.  barring lally's performance -- which is solid -- the direction, sound and the writing would make even the findlays' [roberta and michael, 1960s -- 1970s exploitation filmmakers, google them!] movies appear professional, cool explorations of the human propensity for lust, obsession and perversion.

not that i think director paul verhoeven a bad filmmaker.  he's not.  there is a glitz and sheen to this movie that asks for your attention.  the acting by the cast is pretty solid.  and yet the set pieces and the overall narrative arc are just silly.  even the famous sharon stone crotch expose scene is rather goofy.  i don't find it erotic, or even pornographic.  the filmmaker's reached toward a shocking, sexy set piece that everyone would talk about.  it worked.  the scene is notorious and made an impression on our collective pop consciousness.

but there is a parallel scene where stone's nemesis and paramour, michael douglas, is interrogated by the people he works with in that same room.  douglas even dares his fellow cops to stop him from smoking just like stone did when she was questioned in that same room on the same chair.  we are meant to see by these parallel scenes that the cat and mouse game played by these soon to be lovers douglas and stone that they are two sides of the same coin.  they are yin and yang.  douglas and stone are a perfect fit.

i think verhoeven wimped out on that scene with michael douglas.  douglas should have adjusted his legs so his colleagues got a crotch shot too.  all balls to the wall.  instead we get a tepid response and a quick smoke break while douglas chases his doppelganger in a nightclub while stone snorts coke, dances dirty with another woman, and gives douglas the googly eye.

i couldn't take no more.  i turned off the TV.  i know how it ends.  i remember the last scene when douglas and stone are having sex.  stone's hand reaches under the bed.  for the killer's icepick?  the camera follows the arc of the hand.  their breathing heavy.  then. . .then. . .oh, to hell with it.