Basic Instinct

Basic Instinct (1992) follows a murder investigation whose main suspect is a novelist who wrote that exact murder. A musician is killed in his bed with an ice pick. The suspect is Catherine Tramell, a wealthy writer whose book contains the same killing. Nick, the detective on the case, begins an affair with her, and who is using whom stays unclear throughout. The method is never letting the audience be sure. Even the ending is open; the last frame is a question, not an answer. Joe Eszterhas sold the screenplay for three million dollars, a record at the time. Sharon Stone's interrogation scene has been argued over for decades. Stone has said she was not told what the shot would show and learned it at the first screening; Verhoeven denies this. Both hold to their accounts and it has never been settled. Gay rights groups protested during the San Francisco shoot, objecting to bisexual characters being cast as killers. The protests reached the set itself. Jerry Goldsmith's score is the least discussed and best thing in it. Verhoeven's humour is present here too; the film only pretends to take itself seriously. It runs 127 minutes. Good for: erotic thrillers, the nineties, and Verhoeven. Less good for: the sex and violence are explicit and some scenes are uncomfortable.