Instinct

JON TURTELTAUB might not be the worst film-maker in existence (step forward, Michael Winner) or the most boring (my vote: Renny Harlin) but in terms of pure undiluted sentimentality at its worst, no-one lays it on quite like Turteltaub. He has already lent his name to such sugar-coated classics as When You Were Sleeping and the unspeakable Phenomenon, and this eco-friendly little ‘thriller’ is every bit as manipulative, if marginally more entertaining.

The crack: Anthony Hopkins plays a gnarled, grizzly old greybeard named Dr. Ethan Powell, who is incarcerated in a maximum-security psychiatric institution, having killed two park rangers during his stint in the Rwandan jungle living with the apes as part of his anthropological studies. A shrink (Cuba Gooding Jr.) is assigned to assess Powell’s psychiatric condition – which isn’t exactly the easiest task on the planet, since Powell hasn’t spoken a word since he was banged up, and is prone to attacking people bare-handed in explosions of savage rage. Over the course of the next couple of hours, the real nature of Powell’s traumatised isolation is slowly and painfully revealed, interspersed with much tree-huggy moralising of the ‘save-the-animals’ variety.

It’s not all bad, mind you: a few of the prison scenes are almost scary, thanks to a pretty hardcore-looking bunch of characters. Hopkins gives a pretty good performance, and Gooding is less irritating here than has previously been the case. Between them, their combined efforts do just about enough to make you overlook the mushier aspects of the movie.

The finale even has a faintly affecting touch to it, although it would have been considerably more so if Turteltaub hadn’t tried so bloody hard (incidental music, teary goodbyes, redemptive ending etc.) For all its corniness, Instinct is good-natured and ecologically-sound enough to qualify as ideal kiddie viewing, if not much else.