there are some actors that you just look at and will automatically see them as the famous character they play . fran drescher will forever will the nanny , bob denver will always be gilligan , and don knotts lives forever as barney fife . all these people are television actors who appear on their show , week after week playing the same character , so it is hard for this to translate into celebrities who appear in movies . anthony hopkins on the other hand apparently wants us to always think of him as a crazed madman behind bars . this is the only reason i could come up with for him to take the leading role in instinct , a new movie that re-defines cliched and painful . it does not matter if the prison inmates are tough praying on the few weak ones , or that the guards give new meaning to police brutality . you could probably withstand all of the above material on a good bucket of popcorn and a very large soda . but the movie can't even be even fun and smart on a summer movie level , and fails miserably to make us excited or scared in any way . dr . theo calder is a young psychologist who is very high in the areas of self-confidence and self-assurance . he wants to begin seeing a crazed scientist who recently was transported from a prison in africa to one in the states . ethan powell ( hopkins , playing the role of hannibal lecter’s non-cannibal cousin ) was a scientist who disappeared in the forests of africa in 1994 . he lived in the forest with the gorillas he studies for two years before killing two park rangers and injuring two more while trying to protect his gorilla family . in the first interview theo learns some problems that may hinder the investigation of ethan . one , he doesn't speak to anyone at all . two , he hasn't experienced human interaction in so long he responds to almost everything with violent outbursts . three , the doctors at the prison just don't care . how dramatic , how thrilling , how ( inserting snoring sounds here ) . eventually he does get the man to finally utter a few words , but the psychiatrist soon finds himself to be the one who’s being taught a lesson . there’s some message about how no human actually has control , they just think they do , that is what powell teaches him . dr . calder soon expands his horizons as a realizes that is may not be the people in the prison , but the prison itself . the problems with the inmates must live with are guards that are not fair to them and treat them with harshly and violently . plus , oh my god ! everyone in the prison is not being treated with proper respect . ok , let us take a poll : who would ever really care about what happens to any of the people in this movie ? see it and if you don’t come out disgusted then i will personally pay for your next outing to the cinema . ( note : the preceding sentence was just to prove a point that this movie is bad , i will not pay for your next movie so don’t e-mail me asking for money . ) the acting in the film is just horrible . hopkins does nothing in the role that he is accustomed to , and cuba has some keen intellectual ability to pick bad roles that will make him lose his star status . this is not entirely the actor’s faults though . the script could easily have been written better if the proper time was taken with it . the soapy emotion that floats up near the end of the film also doesn’t make any sense with all of the happenings in the beginning of the picture . the setting is uninteresting and the story has too many side plots that they do nothing with which just seem to be there to add to the running time . you could rip up all of the copies ( with gloves on so as not to burn your fingers ) of this movie at your local video store . you could warn people who try to rent it , or you could make a big bonfire and burn all of the copies in the neighborhood . whatever you can do to help make sure that no one on earth will ever have to experience this film ( i believe ) would be greatly appreciated by the american public . so if you haven’t gotten the message yet , avoid instinct , which gets 1/2 a * . the young-uns : the film contains some suspenseful scenes and strong language . it is also senselessly brutal and violent in some scenes . good age : no one who is sober/anyone who liked chill factor a review by frankie paiva the 12 year-old movie reviewer e-mail me at <a href= " mailto : swpstke@aol . com " >swpstke@aol . com</a> visit my website at <a href= " http : //www . homestead . com/teenagemoviecritic/mainpage . html " >http : //www . homestead . com/teenagemoviecritic/mainpage . html</a> 
