director : jon turtletaub cast : anthony hopkins , cuba gooding jr . , donald sutherland , maura tierney , george dzundza screenplay : gerald di pego ( based on the novel by daniel quinn ) producers : barbara boyle , michael taylor runtime : us distribution : buena vista pictures rated r : violence copyright 1999 nathaniel r . atchesonyou know , i never really wondered what the tarzan films would have been like had tarzan been an old man . while watching instinct , i couldn't help but acknowledge the way the film carelessly rehashes the well-explored themes of those earlier movies . even beside the tarzan comparison , instinct just isn't a very good film . it's painfully idealistic , manipulative , and silly . i didn't hate it -- it's simply impossible for me to hate any film starring anthony hopkins ; furthermore , most of the acting is quite good . but i can recognize instinct for what it is beyond my subjective admiration for the actors involved . i can also recognize reasons for wanting to make instinct , and it's pretty clear that this could have been a good film with a massive script overhaul and a director less interested in imitating movies like patch adams . things start off in the predictable way , as director jon turtletaub introduces us to our hero , theo caulder ( cuba gooding , jr . ) , an ambitious , young psychiatrist under the supervision of an experienced , old psychiatrist ( donald sutherland ) . caulder soon finds himself involved in the case of his life , the one he thinks will make him famous . the subject is ethan powell ( hopkins ) , an anthropologist who has been living among gorillas in africa for the past two years . powell has been charged with the brutal murders of several men in africa , and it's now caulder's job to find out of he's mentally competent enough to stand trial . through a series of short sessions , caulder tries to put together the complex psyche of powell . even though it really is an old man version of tarzan , much of this central idea is rather interesting . as i said , hopkins is captivating for every second he's on screen ; he has a way of convincing us that he's not acting , that he's actually a man who has just spent two years of his life living with a family of wild gorillas . the character himself isn't very interesting -- he's just an anthropologist who really likes gorillas -- but hopkins makes him interesting with subtleties both in speech and action . gooding jr . does strong work opposite hopkins , playing caulder as an intelligent and flawed individual . the screenplay , written by gerald di pego and " suggested by " a novel by daniel quinn , gives us no background information on caulder , but that seems to be the point ( he has no time for friends because he's obsessed with his work ) . nonetheless , these two actors are essentially the entire list of things that are good about instinct . unfortunately , filmmaking this inept can mangle the effect of even the best acting . turtletaub and di pego are both guilty of instinct's artistic failure , for they work together to make the dumbest , most cliche-ridden environment in which their characters are to live , and they do so by means of brainless subplots . first , we have the prison warden subplot . the prison warden is evil and wants to stop caulder's progress at any cost ; if this means taking caulder off the powell case , then that's fine . there's also the prison guard subplot . the prison guard is played by john ashton ; the prison guard seems to enjoy mercilessly beating upon the psychotics under his supervision , and he's instrumental in helping the story along to its obvious conclusion . then there's the daughter subplot , in which maura tierney ( playing the daughter ) must look very upset a lot of the time ; after all , she is the daughter of a deranged man . if some of this stuff sounds familiar , that's because they're all devices that have been used and reused in countless other films . the evil doctor in patch adams is not unlike the evil warden here . the offensive caricatures of mental patients lack the depth that the similar portrayals in one flew over the cuckoo's nest had . ashton's evil prison guard pales in comparison to clancy brown's in the shawshank redemption . hopkins' performance will undoubtedly remind audiences of his turn in the silence of the lambs . and then there's the whole tarzan thing , which is more than a little bit obvious through the entire film . perhaps what irritates me most about instinct is the half-hearted attempt at philosophical depth . the message powell brings back from the wild is not a subtle one : he thinks that humans are " takers , " that they expand and kill and that we should all just live like gorillas . i can sympathize with that , but only when it's in a compelling film . this is the kind of stupid movie -- just like patch adams -- in which a big group of characters ( psychotic inmates , in this case ) rise against the evil forces oppressing them by tearing up playing cards . what does any of this have to do with a man who has just spent two years of his life with gorillas ? if all the subplots of instinct had been left on the cutting room floor , we would have had a thirty-minute movie far superior to the two-hour one that i watched today . if the central idea had been developed beyond the old man tarzan premise , then we would really have had something interesting -- a movie that doesn't rely on the strength of its actors . 
