Instinct (1999)
Directed by Jon Turteltaub
In a prison for the criminally insane, deranged anthropologist Ethan Powell is set to be examined by a bright young psychiatrist, Theo Caulder. Driven by ambition and a hunger for the truth, Caulder will eventually risk everything—even put his very life on the line—in a harrowing attempt to understand the bizarre actions of this madman.
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What critics compared Instinct to
And its clear that director Jon Turteltaub (responsible for such film failures as Cool Runnings and Instinct ) brings only the films lamest elements to the table.
Restlessly directed by Jon Turteltaub, who showed no particular flair for adventure filmmaking in his wet Phenomenon and Instinct, the movie goes like a rocket, from one ornate clue to the next; National Treasure is more a detective story than a two-fisted adventure like the Indiana Jones movies.
Instead let's marvel at how a trio of hack writers (collectively responsible for "Snow Dogs," "The 6th Day" and "I-Spy" ), coupled with a director whose best work is mediocre and pedestrian (Jon Turteltaub of "Phenomenon" and "Instinct" ), can take this dumb idea and make it even worse in every conceivable way.
Look at what the "creative" types behind this numbing mass of inanimate boredom have done before: director Jon Turteltaub gave us Disney's The Kid and Instinct ; the screenwriting team of Cormac and Marianne Wibberley perpertrated Bad Boys II and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle ; screenwriter Jim Kouf is behind Taxi and Snow Dogs.
In the end, it’s the odd casting and unimaginative, workmanlike direction (from the man behind both the Anthony Hopkins potboiler Instinct and Disney’s Jamaican bobsled epic Cool Runnings) that make the painfully overlong National Treasure the exercise in mediocrity it is.
At one recent point attracting the likes of Eli Roth as one of its many potential helmers, honors eventually went to Jon Turteltaub, a mainstream director who has heretofore focused on light-fared, audience friendly fluff (his last dip into genre was 1999’s risible Instinct), who unveils this narrative as gracefully as its titular man-eater mangles a handful of victims.