Instinct exists in a mirror universe caught between Manhunter and Red Dragon — and, mirrorlike, it’s all surface and no substance. Dr. Ethan Powell (Anthony Hopkins) is best described as a comparatively benevolent Hannibal Lecter, and Dr. Theo Caulder (Cuba Gooding Jr.) is the Will Graham-esque hero who wants to help rather than use the old man.
The movie opens and closes with Powell in Rwanda, and in the intervening two hours the script can’t be bothered to answer why he was brought back to America or how he returned to Africa.
Looking surprisingly hale and hearty for a sexagenarian who spent two of the last three years “living with the mountain gorillas,” followed by a one-year stint “in an African prison” after “He killed two Rwandan park rangers and injured three others,” Powell is reverse-extradited to the United States.
I say ‘reverse’ because in a regular extradition, one jurisdiction delivers a person accused or convicted of committing a crime in another jurisdiction over to the other’s law enforcement; here, the jurisdiction where Powell has been convicted of a crime delivers him to another jurisdiction where he has not broken the law. Why?
According to Ben Hillard (Donald Sutherland), head of the psychiatry department at the University of Miami, “We wouldn’t want one of our former professors hanged in Rwanda.” Hillard has been “asked to do the evaluation” of Powell.
Who asked him? For that matter, who is the “we” that wouldn’t want a former professor hanged in Rwanda? The department of psychiatry? The University? I doubt they had the clout to negotiate Powell’s release.
Hillard has his wonder boy Caulder research all the facts in the case asap. Caulder complains that it’s “three-day’s work packed in the next 24 hours.” Where did he get “three days”? I guess he figures it’ll take him one day per year. It makes no difference, though, because one scene later he has learned all he needed to know, presumably by osmosis.
“They want a 30-day evaluation, followed immediately by a hearing with a judge,” Caulder tells Hillard. I suppose “they” would be the “U.S. State Department,” representatives of which appear briefly at the beginning of the film as little more than errand boys — relieving the Rwandan authorities of Powell and unloading the good doctor at Shawshank State Prison Harmony Bay Correctional Facility — and are not seen ever again. Their interest in Powell is never justified, but then they show so little of it.
The screenplay is equally incurious regarding the questions it does ask. For example, Powell, “lives with the animals, takes on their behavior. Becomes one. How does that happen?” Apparently, it happens simply by virtue of hanging around gorillas in a couple of flashbacks until they accept you pretty much out of the blue.
At least that’s Powell’s approach. Other than letting the apes grow accustomed to his face, he does nothing to win them over — except stopping using his camera which, Powell claims, made the gorillas “nervous” because it “didn’t belong.” Powell’s clothes, glasses, watch, etc., on the other hand, the gorillas must have found them perfectly natural.
Anyway, Caulder pleads with Hillard to let him do the evaluation and the latter agrees. Not so agreeable, however, is Harmony Bay’s Warden Keefer (John Aylward). Caulder “was kind of hoping to spend most of every day with Powell,” but Keefer soon disabuses him of that notion: “I can give you Powell now in an unused visitation room and again on Friday.”
I’m confused. Does the time between “now” and “Friday” count toward the 30 days? Or just the time that Caulder spends with Powell? Incidentally, their first interview lasts approximately two minutes; does that count as a whole day?
Much later, after Caulder has predictably incurred Keefer’s displeasure, the warden reduces Caulder’s time with Powell to ten days, and then to seven. Would that be seven days starting ‘now’ or on ‘Friday’?
Hillard clarifies that Keefer does indeed have “the power to kick you out whenever he wants to and bring in somebody else.” And the mysterious entities that specifically “asked” for Hillard (and, by extension, Caulder) have no say in this? Also, would that somebody else pick up where Caulder left off, or would they just start over?
Long before that, though, Caulder is dismayed to find that he has to join Harmony Bay’s staff on a temporary basis and handle patients other than Powell. “That’s the deal,” says Keefer — but with whom was this deal made? The University or the State Department? I’m going to assume it was the former, because you’d think the latter would have enough muscle to get a 30-day evaluation done in 30 days.
Even while saddled with a time-wasting subplot wherein he rallies the inmates to challenge the warden’s iron-fist rule, Caulder still manages to finish the evaluation in time for the hearing — which I guess means that the hearing got pushed forward, and then cancelled; for reasons and through events not worth recounting, Powell escapes from Harmony Bay (and magically materializes back in the jungle, as I’m sure a dangerous lunatic who just broke out of the loony bin with nothing but the clothes on his back would have no trouble doing) without getting his day in court.
It would have been a credit to the hero’s profession to allow him to do his job and see the evaluation through regardless of the outcome of the hearing; then again, I don’t think that the filmmakers had the slightest fucking idea what the hell this hearing was supposed to determine.
All things considered, I appreciate the attempt to raise awareness about the endangered gorilla population in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, and am grateful that the apes aren’t computer-generated, and thoroughly enjoyed the show-stealing, centerpiece scene that sees Hopkins and Gooding transcending the incoherent material they were given, but as a whole Instinct is too shallow and contrived to have any lasting, meaningful impact.
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