rated R– Sharon Stone returns fourteen years later (better late than never) and looking better than ever (plastic surgery will do that, so hey, don’t knock it), as Catherine Tramell, a character first created by Joe Eszterhas that rocketed Stone to instant stardom. The difference is that this time, she’s crass right up front, leaving little adjustment time for the audience to warm to her, as she plunges her car into London’s Thames River, while a random lover gropes her at 110 miles per hour. Enter the law – Detective Washburn (David Thewlis) and her Scotland Yard-appointed psychiatrist, Dr. Michael Glass (David Morrissey), who steps into the shoes of the original Michael Douglas’s flawed and tortured character, falling victim to Tramell’s seductions. “She kills because she’s addicted to risk,” seems to be the premise that weaves in and out of a painfully bad movie. That’s because while Stone’s character is composed and manipulative, she also feels forced and rehearsed, as though she’s reciting lines for the thrill of just doing this role all over again – because, let’s face it, her career has failed since, and this is the only character she can work with. Stone’s original performance delivered an innocence that left us jaded. Somehow that combination made her believably likable, as the woman who “gets off on murders,” rather than getting off on sex, because “people die in my novels and I have to think of new and interesting ways to kill them.” “Basic Instinct 2” lacks the vulnerability that the first one possessed, thus stirring my own basic instincts to tell me that I should have left the theatre fifteen minutes into the movie.One crown
