Basic Instinct

It plays better than it reviews — the watch lands harder than the write-ups suggest.

• “Grade-A pulp fiction. This erotically charged thriller about the search for an ice-pick murderer in San Francisco rivets attention through its sleek style, attractive cast doing and thinking kinky things, and story, which is as weirdly implausible as it is intensely visceral.”

  Staff [Not Credited], Variety · 90

• “The film is for horny pups of all ages who relish the memory of reading stroke books under the covers with a flashlight. Verhoeven has spent $49 million to reproduce that dirty little thrill on the big screen.”

  Peter Travers, Rolling Stone · 75

• “Bad politics sometimes makes for good movies, and the harsh, politically incorrect truth about Basic Instinct is that it's a tantalizing, suspensefully correct thriller.”

  Jay Boyar, Orlando Sentinel · 75

• “A splendid murder mystery, but one with as much gore and steamy sex as I've seen in a long time. [20 Mar 1992, p.3F]”

  Joe Pollack, St. Louis Post-Dispatch · 75

• “Basic Instinct transfers Mr. Verhoeven's flair for action-oriented material to the realm of Hitchcockian intrigue, and the results are viscerally effective even when they don't make sense. Drawing powerfully on the seductiveness of his actors and the intensity of their situation, Mr. Verhoeven easily suspends all disbelief.”

  Janet Maslin, The New York Times · 70