In spite of Sharon Stone’s hearty encore performance as the ultimate femme fatale, “Basic Instinct 2” falls unbearably flat.
Husband-and-wife screenwriters Leora Barish and Henry Bean employ such labored plotting and clinical bits of sex and violence that there isn’t anything to savor.
There is not a trace present of the Hitchcock-inspired suspense that director Paul Verhoeven powerfully exerted over the original “Basic Instinct.”
Instead we get a futile change of locale for Catherine Tramell (Stone) who has moved her novel-writer’s desk to London in search of high-risk episodes of sexual gratification.
David Morrissey is painfully miscast as Dr. Michael Glass (“Derailed”) a criminal psychiatrist brought in to analyze Catherine after her involvement in the death of her sex partner during a high-speed car ride.
Director Michael Caton-Jones (“Scandal”) proves himself incapable of handling the rigid demands of a suspense thriller, albeit a poorly written one.
Rated R. 114 mins.
