‘What are you going to do? Charge me with smoking?‘
Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven has a habit of making films that age like a fine if unusual wine. Both Showgirls and Starship Troopers have undergone a deserved reappraisal since their release in the ’90s and Basic Instinct feels like a better film now than it did in 1992. This is partly because a modern-day audience can embrace Sharon Stone’s commanding performance in a way that people in the ’90s clearly couldn’t, and partly because the film itself is incredibly compelling…
We open with a man being brutally murdered with an ice pick whilst having sex with a beautiful blonde. All signs point to mystery writer and femme fatale Catherine Tramell (Stone) but Detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) has designs on a wider conspiracy.
Douglas was already a star in 1992 but this was Stone’s breakout role (Verhoeven had previously cast her in Total Recall and only managed to get Douglas and the studio to hire her after 12 other actresses had turned the role down) and it is also one of the most iconic performances of the ’90s. There is so much more here than just a beautiful woman crossing her legs (Stone claims she didn’t know she would be so… exposed until she actually saw the film at the premiere) and while that particular scene is genuinely brilliant, Stone is a revelation throughout. It’s all Douglas can do to just try and keep up with her. It’s a performance that is sensual, vulnerable and surprisingly funny when humour is called for – a physical performance that also demonstrates an absolute mastery of delivering dialogue that should be corny but somehow comes out convincing.
Basic Instinct channels both de Palma and Hitchcock but the combination of Joe Eszterhas’s knockout screenplay (a script that was so in demand the studio paid $3 million for it) and Verhoeven’s daring direction provide the perfect canvas for Stone to paint a masterpiece – a film that gets better every time I watch it.