This was the biggest steaming pile of a movie I've seen in a long time. Awful writing, awful directing, tedious and contrived plot, and poor acting efforts from an A-list cast. In fact, this is one of those movies that's hard to turn away from because the awfulness is so compelling -- this is a movie with serious Oscar pretensions that comes up short in so many ways. The plot can be more or less summed up as a melodramatic mix of the worst parts of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest & Gorillas in the Mist. Man loves Gorillas, Gorillas get killed, man goes berserk (this is the big secret he's keeping mute over in the nuthouse?) Hopkins wades through the dreadful script as well as possible, but Gooding as usual hams it up to the max all movie long with his favorite screwed-up-Popeye-indignant face. A couple of choice scenes to demonstrate the cheeziness of this movie -- First, the scene in which Gooding gets all the inmates to tear up their playing cards while the inspirational music swells and you half-expect the cast to start the slow-unison clap from those awful highschool sports movies. Second, when Gooding gets out of his car in the end after quitting the asylum, he climbs out of the car and with more sappy music swelling does the Tim Robbins Shawshank-escape Jesus pose in the driving rain... unbelievable syrupy tripe. Don't waste your time with this stinker, unless you like the unique awfulness of the Heaven's Gate-type of train-wrecks; you're better off jabbing a salad fork in your eye for 2 hours.