Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Ok, I know that many wouldn't agree with me, but I think that BASIC INSTINCT is one of the worst movies ever made in the last fifty years - especially since it reached a cult status and many, including a friend of mine, love it (!!!). It's one of the many depraved thrillers of the 1990s. Instead of good film making, Paul Verhoeven decided to write a corny and nasty thriller. It resulted in a wild assault on sensibility using many bad words, many violence and including lots and lots of sex scenes with Stone and Douglas. It's easy to say many bad words and put many sex scenes in a movie, but this ruined the movie, since the writing was absent and was, I think, written by a turtle. And the movie was supposed to be great? NO WAY IN HELL! Verhoeven's mantra was 'in doubt, let Michael Douglas exploding of anger and have sex with Sharon Stone like 5 times in the movie, yeah, 5 TIMES!!!''. Many praised Douglas and Stone's performance, but for me they were very broad and clownish, and mating all the time like crazed dolphins. (a big facepalm follows) There is no subtlety and nothing good in the movie.I think that this movie is adequate only to a stupid and sex-crazed audience that is used to have the brain damaged by these movies. Stay away from this movie like poison, you will be proud of following my advice! Even Harold P. Warren (the director of ''Manos the Hands of Fate'') could have made a better movie given the budget for this movie.

An absolute classic, not only a brilliant thriller and a generally entertaining movie but with that added erotic element. To date we have watched this movie three times, will we be watching it again in the future? absolutely.

The main criticism levelled at Basic Instinct is that it does not work as a "who done it" movie, because the evidence suggests that either of the two characters committed the murders. But I never cared about the "who done it" aspect of this movie anyway. Basic Instinct is really about how the basic instincts of two people - Detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) and Catherine Trammel (Sharon Stone) - brought them closer together. Over the course of the movie, Detective Curran slowly realizes that he does not like staying off cigarettes, alcohol, and cocaine and being a good cop. Instead, he wants at a deeper level to break free of the shackles and release his basic instincts -- which include aggression, uncontrolled rage, wild lovemaking, and much more. There are a number of important events early on in the film, which indicate that Curran is headed in that direction. He is chided by Catherine Trammel to start drinking and smoking again. His aggressive, dominatrix lovemaking with Dr. Elizabeth Garner suggests that they are not a good match. Finally, Curran becomes the object of Trammel's seductive and complex mind games. The unfolding of this plot halfway into this movie is masterful. Sure the scene where Trammel reveals to the police officers that she is without panties is something of a climax. But even then, watching Detective Curran fall to pieces and revert back to his basic instincts is fascinating. But then the second half of the movie broke down for a number of reasons. At the half point, all the creativity and invention (which made the first half so enjoyable) had been exhausted and all that was left was a dumb-down and sleazy screenplay. Screenplay writer Joe Esterhaz ran out of good ideas and basically came up with a second and third act which sabotaged what could have been an elegant and highly intelligent psycho-drama. Lines like "f*** of the century," "that's her p***y talking," and "f*** like minks and raise rugrats" are really beneath the dignity of the intelligent actors uttering this dialogue. Equally disappointing is the unmotivated violence. I am not against very violent films in principle. But when the violence is unmotivated or lacking a convincing rationale, then it ruins the film. Why not come up with something more intellectually challenging for the actors and the audience, rather than just inserting a bunch of sleazy trash? Unfortunately, once Esterhaz' screenplay took this turn and then added all those silly "who done it" elements, Paul Verhoeven's excellent direction could not save this film from the trash heap. A pity really, because the director and screenwriter were really onto something with their premise.

I remember looking at the ratings and thinking they were oddly average for a 90's thriller (they're usually very good) with excellent lead actors Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone, just as great in this one. I knew it had at least one very controversial scene, and couldn't understand why the subpar general opinion.It turns out the film is brilliant thriller cinema for an hour - very good acting, memorable scenes, honestly excellent dialogue, and coherent and accessible - but seems to drop what it's been doing for that hour as the later developments draw closer to a different sort of feel, and quality. The film starts to become pretty self-indulgent, as the intrigue slowly becomes more convoluted and complicated to follow, with too many characters now to remember and too many dynamics between them. It fell into the trap it set up for itself, of wanting to be unpredictable continually throughout two hours of playtime and constantly evolving as it reaches the deeper ends of the plot - but it feels just too complicated in the end and whatever expectations are stemmed earlier in the viewing are gone as it progresses in the second hour. The ending just doesn't match the quality of the first hour.Now on the more philosophical aspect, the film is in the end too timid. Its over-the-top sexuality and explicit depiction of lust don't serve a purpose we learn at the end if not a weak aesthetic of its own; and as I've read somewhere the film merely 'exploits' the dark side and never 'explores' it.5.5/10