capsule : dumb dud of an entry in the body heat sweepstakes , and now something of a landmark for having spawned a jillion clones . basic instinct's worst crime is that it's not just a bad movie , but in many ways , an incompetent one as well . it's stupid in itself , and stupid to think its audience is as stupid as it is . it's supposed to be a thriller , but the plot is dead on its feet , and ultimately arbitrary ; it's only put into the movie to jerk us around . it's also supposed to be sexy , but it's instead got the unpleasant rawness of a teenager showing younger kids his collections of dirty pictures . it's a ripoff . the story opens with a rock star being murdered while in the throes of orgasm . the biggest suspect is an authoress , catherine tramell ( sharon stone ) , who wrote a novel in which the murder was eerily presaged . or maybe it's the work of a copycat ? these and other plot threads get fed to the detective who's on the case ( michael douglas ) , who has a few problems himself . like we wonder if his elevator goes to the top floor . we can measure with a stopwatch the time from them setting eyes on each other to the moment they are doing the mattress dance . joe eszterhas has written the screenplay , and he uses a device that he used before in the much better jagged edge : the killer's identity is kept a secret until the movie's final shot . this isn't in itself a problem -- the problem is that up until that point , we've been given nothing to work with . every clue in the movie -- every clue -- is ambiguous . the whole thriller aspect of the movie is a shill . red herrings , dead plot threads , violence , and kinky sexuality litter the movie like potholes in manhattan streets . they add up to zip , because they're not happening to people we care about . douglas's character is foulmouthed and bitter and that's it ; stone's character has an iron-on smile that never changes ; the rest are forgettable . when we don't even have the luxury of giving a damn about anyone in the movie , who cares what happens in it ? especially with an ending that is not only unsatisfying , but in many ways inexplicable ? ( a friend of mine once came up with a rule of thumb about movie characters : " if no one in the movie behaves like anyone you know , or would * care * to know , just leave ! " ) one of the nastier things about the movie is the way it treats lesbianism not as an integral part of someone's life , but as a kind of kink -- something to thrill men with . i despair whenever i encounter this kind of stupidity in mainstream entertainment ; are we still so culturally neanderthal that the only way to include something like that in a big-budget hollywood film is as a hefnerism ?
