Instinct

Instinct is a 1999 American psychological thriller film, directed by Jon Turteltaub and starring Anthony Hopkins, Cuba Gooding Jr., George Dzundza, Donald Sutherland, and Maura Tierney. It was very loosely inspired by Ishmael, a novel by Daniel Quinn. In the United States, the film had the working title Ishmael. In 2000, the film was nominated for and won a Genesis Award in the category of feature film. This was the first film produced by Spyglass Entertainment. Plot The film examines the mind of anthropologist Ethan Powell who had been missing for a few years, living in the jungle of Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable Forest with mountain gorillas. He is convicted of killing and injuring several supposed Wilderness Park Rangers in East Africa, and is sent to prison. A bright young psychiatrist, Theo Caulder, tries to find out why he killed them, but becomes entangled in a quest to learn the true history and nature of humankind, stating that civilization has steadily destroyed the natural world, advocating that humans abandon this. Eventually it is revealed that during the course of Powell's stay with the gorillas, they accepted him as part of their group; he was attempting to protect his great ape family when the poachers arrived and started shooting them. He gets a hearing to reveal the truth, but an attack by a vicious guard on another prisoner causes Powell to be reminded of the killed gorillas, at which point he violently attacks the guard to stop him, is restrained and stops talking again. At the end of the film, Powell escapes from prison using a pen to dig out the lock on a window, and heads back to Africa. Cast Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Ethan Powell Cuba Gooding Jr. as Dr. Theo Caulder Donald Sutherland as Professor Ben Hillard Maura Tierney as Lynn Powell George Dzundza as Dr. John Murray John Ashton as Dacks Ivonne Coll as Dr. Marzuez John Aylward as Warden Keefer Rex Linn as Alan Tracey Ellis as Annie Marc Macaulay as Foley Verne Troyer as Gorilla Tory Kittles as Prisoner