Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction

What do “Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction” (2006), “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” (1964), and “Hercules In New York” (1970) have in common? They have made the Internet Movie Data Base list of the bottom 100 movies. It isn’t amazing to me that “Risk Addiction” achieved this.

Sharon Stone plays Catherine Tramell, an author of sexy criminal novels who is addicted to risk and sex—preferably together. A male passenger in her car is killed after an accident where she is driving fast and masturbating at the same time.

Roy Washburn (David Thewlis) is the detective assigned to the task of taking her to trial. His methods aren’t always legitimate, and he’s decided she is going to pay for what she’s done. In order to put her behind bars he requests a psychiatric exam from Dr. Michael Glass (David Morrissey) who is very experienced and harsh in his judgments in criminal cases.

Dr. Glass accepts Tramell as a patient, but almost immediately realizes something is amiss. It seems everyone associated with her ends up dead. She makes no threats during their sessions so Glass is held to “client privilege” not to say anything. He had a similar experience some years before where one of his clients killed someone, and was determined to not let it happen again. He needed to find out if Tramell really was killing all these people, and if so, how to stop her.

The quality of the film and acting is average, but I heard only one thing that was accurate. Dr. Glass at one point talked about addictive behavior. He said that a person yielding to an addiction tends to need increasingly more intense events to maintain their thrill.

“Basic Instinct” is a mindless movie trying to appeal to those who want sexual “eye candy.” The viewer appeal is so narrow that many won’t be interested. The most common attraction is suggestive clothing, but the movie includes everything up to full frontal female and full rear male nudity. There are two instances where there is full male and female nudity during acts of sex.

There is also implied sex and acts of masturbation along with sex talk throughout. There are more than 30 sexual slang terms used while f* takes up another 20 plus instances. God’s name is also misused a half dozen times.

Five different actors turned down roles in “Risk Addiction”, at least two of them because of elements in the film. I’m sure many who watch the movie will ask themselves, “Why didn’t I join them in staying away?”

Violence: Minor / Profanity: Heavy / Sex/Nudity: Extreme

See list of Relevant Issues—questions-and-answers.