Professor Ethan Powell (Sir Anthony Hopkins), is an academic who has spent two years in the Rwandan forest, tracking and living with gorillas.
He is brought in for questioning by the local authorities on a charge of murder when he attacks poachers and is then imprisoned.
However, official US string-pulling brings Powell in front of Dr Theo Caulder (Cuba Gooding Jr), the top psychologist at a Florida institute for the mentally disturbed.
Powell is certainly disturbed. He hardly speaks and seems lost in a deep, private reverie. Gradually, Caulder unpeels the layers covering this intelligent man and starts to find out what really happened.
Caulder is after medical superstardom, but as he probes, it is Powell who turns the tables on him and starts to change the way he approaches life.
As he struggles against the violence of the prison system which cages him and sociopathic guard (John Ashton), Powell tells his story of the gorillas and begins to rewire the psychologist's brain. "You were right, freedom is not just a dream. It's there, beyond those fences that we build all by ourselves."
Instinct is a Film programme that first aired in 1999 and has been classified a 15 certificate.
