The "therapy sessions" (in reality, Hopkins-as-mentor sessions) exhibit a certain charisma. The initial conversations hint at the power within Hopkins and Gooding, and make one wish they have a stronger, more dramatically honest script to work with. Indeed, their talent may make the movie palatable for the average movie-goer. Interesting actors talking about Important Issues, with a dash of emotional tragedy thrown in. But at some point, even the average movie-goer will realize the artifice and manipulation.
Hopkins is imprisoned in a maximum security psychiatric ward of the Harmony Bay prison, a ward filled with lovable audience-friendly lunatics that have stumbled in from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and the Christopher Lloyd Clinic for Overacting. What's not to like? I was engrossed by the therapy sessions and well on my way to accepting the movie as entertaining and enlightening -- till the Ace of Diamonds scene, wherein Caulder solves all of the psychiatric ward's problems in one swell foop. When prison staff psychiatrist George Dzundza gazes at Gooding in awe, as though he had cured Clinton of sexual addiction, I realized I'd been led by the nose all along. Badly.
The map that Powell draws on his cell walls doesn't help.
Maura Tierney offers the best, most nuanced performance as Powell's estranged daughter, eager to have her father back, but horrified by what he's become. Her scenes with Gooding also hint at something deeper ("Don't get nervous, this isn't a date," she tells him at one point), but skitter away from the obvious attraction. One could argue that Instinct displays a benign racism -- the aborted romance subplot, the old white guy holds the secret to save the world, the young black guy must become his student to learn the Big Secret -- but such a charge is beside the point of what's really wrong with the movie.
We've seen it all before.
RATING: **
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