Imagine a middle-aged Sharon Stone with lacquered skin, tightly clad in a black designer dress, sprawled over a reclining leather chair divulging in the most candid of dissertations – her latest sexual conquests – while a dour psychiatrist sitting quietly beside her admires the contours of her smooth legs that are lightly tinged with age spots.
This is a typical over-eroticized scene from “Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction,” which is the unforeseen sequel to the classic 1992 film directed by Paul Verhoeven, a movie I have seen only in fragments, but can already assert that it is more engaging and stylish than the disaster that followed it 14 years later. While the first film might have been tastefully provacative, the second installment is no more than a smut film that stars an aged femme fatale. However, with the exception of a few age spots and some over-processed blonde hair, the 48-year-old Stone does redeem some of her former glory in the revamped role. And at times she creates a strong and enigmatic presence on screen.
The diabolic vixen enters the picture recklessly speeding around the city of London in a stylish sports car with a sedated man in the passenger seat, who turns out to be a famous football player. The man, who is evidently drugged, no doubt by Catherine, is lucid enough to start fooling around with her, and touching her in ways that are too dirty to disclose here. After getting a tad carried away, Catherine ends up driving off the road and plunging into a nearby river. Her momentary lover is trapped in the car and eventually drowns while the callous sexpot manages to escape the same fate.
The aftermath shows a cool and collected Catherine being interrogated by British police. Confounded by Catherine’s relentless mind games, especially Detective Roy Washburn (David Thewlis), Scotland Yard turns Catherine over to the clinical expertise of Dr. Michael Glass, a criminal psychiatrist. David Morrissey, who plays Dr. Glass, is deplorably unmoving right from the very start. I’m not sure if the role requires Morrissey to be completely devoid of a personality. It is a wonder that Catherine would take an interest in this guy. His fluid British accent and his charming good looks are all he has to offer to the silver screen.
After the handsome yet insipid Dr. Glass and the sex-fiend get acquainted, which consists of her sprawling around the uptight British doctor, smoking, and putting the moves on him, he diagnoses the sexpot with a very absurd form of neurosis called “risk addiction.” It’s obvious that there is more going on with Catherine than reckless behavior. Eventually, Catherine is released because of a minor technicality. Once Catherine is set loose, she goes to Dr. Glass’s office and claims she wants to seek out treatment for her condition. At first the doctor denies her requests with an air of professionalism, but after Catherine persists Dr. Glass decides to pencil her in.
Once Dr. Glass takes the notorious Catherine on the film starts to have moments of intrigue. For instance, people that have caused the prudish man strife start turning up dead, and Catherine, in a sense, begins to stalk the doctor. Naturally, Dr. Glass starts to investigate Catherine and tries to probe the seedy layers of Catherine’s neurosis. As he examines her psyche, he forms a type of sinister infatuation for the nymphomaniac. The film might have a chance at this point if didn’t diminish into a series of vulgar scenes such as Catherine trotting around London making her rounds at dank S&M clubs, and a few unsettling and sordid sexual excursions between her and her shrink. The plot sometimes picks up, between moments of unbridled soft-core pornography, but it amounts to a predictable series of events. Ultimately, Sharon Stone runs out of people to have weird sex with, which brings the movie to a much-anticipated end.