Having a terrible secret that hides from anyone years ago, Earl Brooks, a successful and well known respected character who has just had the title of Portland's Man of the Year, struggles against being abused and blackmailed by a strange who witnesses his murder of a couple and photographs him.
The movie is so well made, and so compelling as a portrait of a man at war with himself, that, right up until the end, many people will probably be entertained by its intricately preposterous story.
The audience is apt to forget its own vicarious indulgence in some fairly perverse, psychologically unhinged acted out fantasy, as Kevin Costner masterminds erotically tinged guilty pleasures.
Mr. Brooks spins a web that will wrap you up in nightmares.
New Zealand Herald
November 16, 2007
Initial promise drowns in a tide of subplot complications in this sometimes slick and supremely nihilistic murder thriller which attempts to inject life into Kevin Costner by making him a bad guy.
A dinâmica entre Hurt e Costner carrega Instinto Secreto: exibindo uma imensa química em suas cenas, os dois atores estabelecem um sentimento misto de tensão e camaradagem entre seus personagens.
Quite a few plot lines and character quandaries remain unresolved. And yet the movie makes sense as it stands. After all, one can never know what makes a psychopath tick.
Costner gives a nicely underplayed performance and the film is well enough made to be watchable, if only to find out what enormity will be perpetrated next, and by whom.
7M Pictures
April 27, 2014
It's not that Costner is a bad actor. He's just a one-note actor... like a male Julia Roberts. And this just isn't his note.
This wannabe highbrow horror-thriller is a graceless, unfocused piece of work with a central narrative as tonally schizophrenic and wayward as its lead.
