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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 7, No. 13 |
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Fourteen Years After the Searing Original Film, Sharon Stone returns with the same wicked look in her eye...
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Naughty Sharon bids for
sizzling screen immortality
of TheColumnists.com
Forget Lana Turner, Ava Gardner and the other immortal sirens of Hollywood screen history. We finally have somebody who's deliciously alive and ready to hump and holler her way into the ranks of the great ones--sizzling Sharon Stone.
In her new film, "Basic Instinct II," Stone clearly demonstrates she's finally reached that special zone where she can do no wrong. She can purr a smarmy line of dialogue and make you believe people really talk that way. She can arch her back and pant so convincingly you begin to wonder if stagehands had to hose down her co-star every 15 seconds to get him through the scene. And when she picks up an ice pick to help mix a drink, you subconsciously hunt for the theater's EXIT sign because that look in her eye is way beyond just wicked.
Sharon Stone has been there and done that. She's been acting in movies more than a quarter century and she knows just about everything there is to know about lighting up the screen. The camera doesn't just love her; it craves her. At age 48, Lana and Ava were starting to play moms and women having a last fling. They were looking for larger sizes. At 48, Sharon Stone is doing nude scenes and her last flings don't look as if they'll be coming along anytime in the next 15 or 20 years.
In "Basic Instinct II," for instance, we first meet her as she's out late one night in London, racing her sports sedan at 100 miles an hour with one hand on the wheel and the other doing something rather naughty, quite rapidly, under her dress. There's a doped-up black soccer player in the passenger seat who already looks as if he's died and gone to Heaven even before Sharon runs her car through a railing, sails a couple hundred feet through the air and lands it in the Thames, presumably at her point of orgasm. A few minutes later, she calmly opens the car window just enough to slip her slim body through the aperture and blissfully float to the surface of the river.
Later, when the cops ask her why she left her male friend behind to drown, she doesn't blink an eye telling them she was concentrating on the most important thing: Saving her own ass. As the officers chew over her cold-as-ice remarks for a moment, she lights up a ciggie and blows smoke at their "no smoking" rules, grinning like the devil.
It's quintessential Catherine Tramell, the sociopathic sex-bomb novelist she brought to throbbing life in the original 1992 "Basic Instinct." It's also quintessential Sharon Stone, the gifted actress who finally has found her zone in movies and is now busily building a legacy that our children will be reading about in Hollywood cinema books of the near future.
You may read elsewhere that "Basic Instinct II" is a big comedown from the original film. You may read that it's actually a bad movie. Both things may be true, but don't let it worry you. Sharon Stone is the reason to see "Basic Instinct II" and if you don't get your money's worth, then my advice is to go back to your Moral Majority meetings and drink lots of raspberry lemonade.
The original "Basic Instinct" was not a critic's delight either. Nobody officially liked it except the accountants at the studio, who love the sound of money bags as they hit the floor. Gays even protested it because the women in the movie all had lesbian tendencies and they weren't very nice. Lingerie shops hated it because Sharon Stone made it abundantly clear she wasn't wearing underpants, not even when she dolled up a bit to undergo interrogation by the San Francisco PD.
But the perspective of 14 years is illuminating. Now "Basic Instinct" is considered a classic of modern film noir. I always knew that. I loved it from day one. It's the best thing Michael Douglas ever did and the collaboration of Dutch director Paul Verhoeven and screenwriter Joe Esterhaz produced the most exciting, witty, erotic thriller anyone has ever put on a movie screen. But the real catnip of "Basic Instinct" was the fusion of Sharon Stone's talent with the brilliant crafted character she was born to play--a female villain so clever and so irresistible that she literally wiped the floor with all the guys, macho or otherwise, that crossed her path.
In "Basic Instinct II," Catherine's even smarter and more dangerous. She's busy writing a new novel called "The Analyst" and, to infuse the story with the sort of real-life experience she needs to write at the top of her form, she begins a love-hate relationship with the police analyst (David Morrisey) assigned to her case. Pretty soon he's up to his ears in grotesque murders, sexual adventures of a variety he'd never even imagined were possible and more personal trouble than any rational man could possibly handle.
To be sure, the new film closely follows the pattern set in the original. Catherine's main quarry in the first film was a police detective with a history of alcohol and drug problems and a botched case that had put him in the gunsights of Internal Affairs and sent him into therapy. This time the therapist has the troubled background--a patient he cleared for release who wound up committing a vicious murder.
Catherine's specialty is playing upon the vulnerabilities of her intended victims. In the first film, she kept lighting up in front of the detective, who had just won his own battle to quit smoking, and pouring him drinks he wasn't supposed to have. In "Basic Instinct II," she lights a sexual flame under her analyst, whispering things she'd be willing to do for him if only he'd let his hair down once in awhile.
Naturally, he lets his hair down and next thing you know he's working his way through the Kama Sutra How-To Book, humping anything that comes within range, including his rather surprised ex-wife, whom he takes in an unconventional manner while looking over her shoulder at Catherine's framed picture. When he and Catherine finally get down to it themselves, it's another vivid demonstration of what the detective in the first movie called "the f--- of the century." Since it's now a different century, we can assume Catherine is the record-holder for two back-to-back centuries.
For those who must know quickly, Sharon still works completely naked and, in a manner of speaking, does all her own stunts. She is a fine specimen of a mature woman who still seems to be in her flowering stage. No, you don't see any more of her than you did in "Basic Instinct I," but I personally felt I'd seen every square inch of her, give or take a few millimeters, in the first picture--and I'm happy to report the territory looks every bit as choice 14 years later.
It's interesting to note that Sharon Stone has matured into a richer, better-known, more colorful version of England's Charlotte Rampling, who plays the supporting role of a second psychoanalyst in "Basic Instinct II." Rampling, who's now 61, has continued to play erotic women throughout her career and was still showing a good deal of flesh as recently as 2003's erotic thriller "Swimming Pool." Rampling would be a fine role model for Stone if Stone weren't already a lot more successful. (Ironically, Rampling was in Stone's first movie, Woody Allen's 1980 "Stardust Memories," in which Stone had only a walk-on role.)
The new film also has an ironic and slightly enigmatic ending, following the pattern of the original film. If you recall, the first film ends with detective Michael Douglas believing Catherine was not guilty of the murders. They make love and in the last shot of the film we see that Catherine has an ice pick tucked under the bed. Did that mean she framed the person police finally concluded was the killer? You finally get the answer in the new film.
Personally, I think the long-awaited sequel
is a worthwhile film, though not as original nor as action-packed
as its predecessor. But there's incredible pleasure in watching
Sharon Stone re-inhabit the character of Catherine and take her
off to new heights.
This is the time to watch this compelling performer work at the top of her game. One of these days she's going to turn into Joan Crawford, so be smart and enjoy her for the remaining years we have before that happens.
©2006 by Ron Miller.
The photo is courtesy of "Basic Instinct II." This
column first posted April 3, 2006.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
You can comment on this column online. Please address your message to either "The Editors" or Ron Miller. To send an email, click here and don't forget to mention Ron's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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