Basic [VHS] [2003]

It's not Travolta's best role, but he does a passable Hardy, the great inquisitor. Connie Nielsen steals most of the movie, even though her accent grates on the nerves sometimes, but otherwise she's got what it takes. Timothy Daly is good for most of the movie (until the end), and there just isn't enough Samuel L. Jackson to go around.

Poor Giovanni Ribisi - he must be really tired of being type-cast by now. He plays the same role, once again, for the umpteenth time.

My problem with the movie is that a lot of the scenes are shot out of focus and in the dark - so it's hard to figure out who's doing what to whom most of the time. (My copy didn't have sub-titles, and the close-captioning was pathetic, so that didn't help much)

Any attempt to summarize the plot would contain spoilers, so I won't. Spending a few hours on this 3.5 star movie, wouldn't be time wasted.

Amanda Richards

At the center of the story is a Special Forces training mission that goes horribly awry. Only two of six soldiers make it out of the Panamanian jungle, one of whom is injured and the other of whom isn't talking. The base commander Styles (Timothy Daly) calls in his old buddy Hardy (John Travolta) to interrogate the witness because he feels the job is over the head of Army investigator Osborne (Connie Nielsen). Before the feds get involved, Styles wants to know why the unit leader Sgt. West (Samuel L. Jackson) and four soldiers are lying dead somewhere out in the jungle. Hardy is a former Ranger who served under and hated West, but he is now an agent with the Drug Enforcement Agency. Hardy gets the one soldier to tell his version of events, only to hear a much different story from the injured soldier when he wakes up in the hospital. So begins a quest for the truth that has Hardy and Osborne running back and forth between witnesses, discovering unexpected aspects of the case such as the existence of drug-smuggling operations being carried out inside the base and hospital, and discovering that the big fish they are striving so hard to reel in is one big whopper indeed.

Do things become confusing? That's affirmative, but I see this in a positive light. This movie makes you stop and think, turning over what you have heard in your own mind not so much to predict the future as to merely stay caught up with the twists and turns you have just seen revealed before your very eyes. In the final analysis, one or two little aspects of the presentation, which occur largely in the form of dream-like flashbacks, may have a weak leg to stand on but never come close to collapsing or falling over. Some will probably be tempted to just throw their hands up in the air and give up trying to understand everything, but those who love a challenge, especially one presented in such a theatrical and awe-inspiring way, will find themselves energized and inspired to a degree few movies can hope to duplicate. For my money, Basic is one of the most intelligent, suspenseful thrillers I've seen in a long time.

In Basic, we follow ex-Ranger and master interrogator John Travolta who is called in to investigate what happened in Samuel L. Jackson's training exercise which left only 2 survivors, one of which is wounded. What follows is a series of flashbacks, but the story being told each time by someone new. It has the potential for a clever way to tell the tale, but instead turns out to be annoying and confusing. Later we learn that drugs are involved, and that almost every single character including Travolta himself is hiding something from the investigation. It's all highly confusing indeed.

I tend to like complicated films, which deliver an exciting and unpredictable twist. But by the same token, I hate those films which are made to look more complex than the storyline actually is. Basic falls perfectly into that character. Definitely not a film to watch, at least not without a notebook and pen to keep abreast with the convoluted plot.