Basic

Rating:
Summary: Your BASIC Mess Of A Movie...
Review: Basic's plot twists were crazy at the least. Despite that fact the movie is still very watchable. I thought that it was very entertaining and still keeps me thinking. John Travolta is convincing as "Hardy", while the others try a bit too hard to get into their characters.

Rating:
Summary: BASICally, it's good!
Review: "Basic had more twist then a twizler!" Basic was a fresh Military/Thriller for me, that entertained me till the end! I did not see this movie in theaters, but I did rent it. The movie had a much deeper story then the trailer let on. John Travolta and Sam Jackson light up the screen once again! A must rent DVD!

Rating:
Summary: Really, really good! really!
Review: Personally, I find john travolta kind of annoying. I put off renting this one as long as possible because of that. But I started reading reviews and decided to risk the few bucks and check it out. Was I surprised! It was really good! It's a real who-done-it kind of flick. And by now you probably know that there is a surprise twist at the end. Well, actually the last 20 mintues of the movie is one giant spiral. Just when you think you have it figured out, you're wrong. And again, and again. But the turns are not so unbelievable that you're like "yeah, right." They make sense. I've seen flicks with surprise twists where it appears they made the twist just to say that it had a twist, not that it served any purpose. But in this movie about deceival, the twists are just logical parts of the plot. I'm not sure what the review meant by "irrelavent". I found it all relavent, and fun. It was a fun movie. It was fun hanging onto your seat just waiting to see what would happen next. Highy reccomended. Samuel Jackson, as usual, rocks!

Rating:
Summary: Good Military Movie!
Review: This is a great military thriller that is as full of turns and twists as your small intestine. John Travolta is great, but Samuel L. Jackson is, well Samuel L. Jackson. This movie's ending is very confusing and unexpected. All in all it is a good movie to watch ONCE, then it gets old. I'd recommend it to a military or action lover.

Rating:
Summary: one too many twists, the film tries to do too much
Review: A Film by John McTiernan

I didn't like it. I'll make that clear from the start. I thought the movie had some potential and had its moments, but McTiernan kept throwing huge twists and swerves at us and ultimately the movie threw one too many twists and just killed the whole thing.

The movie opens with some horrible narration by Connie Nielson, but we move into a Ranger training exercise. West (Samuel L Jackson) is the training leader and he takes his men out on a live fire exercise. The scene shifts to a chopper coming in and we learn that it has been 6 hours since the men were supposed to check in. Nobody has. The soldiers in the helicopter see flashes of gunfire and realize that the surviving men are firing on each other. Two men are rescued, one goes to the hospital and other is taken in for questioning. The non-injured soldier is interrogated by Obsorne (Connie Nielson). He demands to talk to a Ranger and makes a mark on the bottom of a sheet of paper that seems to spook the base commander. The base commander calls in a disgraced former Ranger/DEA agent (who is currently under suspicion of bribery, but is an old friend, Hardy (John Travolta).

Hardy interviews/interrogates both surviving Rangers and he gets different stories, so he keeps on going back and forth between the two of them and the stories keep changing, as if they are adding on to each other and building and adapting the stories for Hardy as he brings new information to each Ranger. Thus far, the story is told in a similar fashion to Courage Under Fire (a superior movie to this one). The problem is that Basic keeps throwing twists and turns until it no longer makes much sense nor could I keep caring when something changed again. By the time the last twist is thrown as the very end, and I realized that this invalidated the entire movie, I also realized that this last twist killed quite a bit of the internal consistency (whatever was left) that the movie actually had. I'm not going to give spoilers for the film, in case anyone does want to see it, but if you think back on the movie (after watching it), one or two comments make more sense and the rest make a whole lot less sense.

The bottom line is that this movie stinks and was a disappointment (even going in with low expectations). Sam Jackson gives another scene stealing performance, but it is completely wasted. Connie Nielson was flat and uninteresting, and Travolta was serviceable (no more than that). Basic tries to do too much with too little and turns out to be an utter waste of film.

Rating:
Summary: Are you kidding?
Review: At the end of a good con movie, I smack my forehead with my palm and say "OH! I should have known that!" But, of course, I didn't. That's what makes con movies so cool.

This movie seems pretty cool for the first two thirds, but the last third is ridiculous. This movie starts out as a gritty, serious military drama, then turns into a farce. The criminal masterminds, known as "section eight," actually have a huge 8-ball hanging outside their hideout. I mean a 6-foot tall billard ball hanging on a clothesline outside their secret lair. The ultra-covert super-secret-soldier drug cartel. Now, I know this seems like a small point to pick on, but I choose it only as an example of how stupid this movie gets toward the end. After the straightfaced detective story this movie pretends to be in the beginning, everything unravels into a parody of every bad action movie you've ever seen. That huge eight ball outside the mastermind's lair is not the cheesiest thing you will witness in the final 15 minutes or so, but it is typical of that part of the movie.

And the con? The Big Suprise Ending would have left me feeling no less cheated if the characters had suddenly sprouted wings and flown to Venus. It is complete bull. And I'm not saying that because didn't pick up on the clues peppered throughout the movie. I caught a whiff of this stinker of an ending early on, but I told myself "No, they wouldn't do anything that stupid." Yes, they would. Any realism, intrigue, drama, or suspense built up early in the movie fails utterly to pay off in the final reel.

Rating:
Summary: An honorable attempt.
Review: You have to respect director John McTiernan for what he is attempting with Basic: The Thinking Man's Action Film. While at its core, Basic is your run-of-the-mill murder mystery interlaced with testosterone moments of flying bullets and angry stares, in the end the final product becomes bogged down in its own cleverly laid sandtraps. The screenplay, while sharply written with tight dialogue still fails to deliver the knockout punch. The performances are adequate, with Giovanni Ribisi being the lone sell-out in the cast. While attempting to appear sinister, amoral and just plain confused, he comes off as a pure hack; all menacing sidelong glances, guttural "I hate Daddy" speeches while sputtering riddle after incoherent riddle. John Travolta imbues Tom Hardy with the same boyish charm and ornery impetus that had littered every character he has every played, and Sam Jackson is merely adequate. Two surprise performances however come in the form of Tim Daly (Wings) and Harry Connick Jr. Not a terrible effort, but Basic could have been better.

Rating:
Summary: Worth watching once...
Review: This is a good story if you can stomach the winding plot, which takes several sharp turns throughout the movie, making it a little hard to follow at times. John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson give good performances and this is probably one of the best performances I've ever seen from Sharon Stone. She's quite believeable in her role as an Army captain. However, like many military films, this one takes some great liberties with what does and doesn't happen in the military, but it's fiction, so it's excusable in its

Rating:
Summary: Attention to Detail??
Review: Anyone who has ever had any experience with the Army should be appalled by this movie. Let me just point out a few things that were.....missed.

1. Soldiers do not wear there beret's when on a mission in the jungle, or any field mission for that matter.

2. When Sergent West (Samuel L. Jackson)is yelling at his soldiers in formation, he is wearing the rank of a Specialist, which is a demotion by at least 4 ranks. Not to mention that his sunglasses are out of regulation.

3. Soldiers in dress green uniform,(army investigater, played by Connie Nielsen) do not wear combat boots with thier pants bloused unless they're in an airborn unit and have earned the right to do so. Also, this caracter never wears head gear, which is required in the regulation any time a soldier is outdoors and in uniform.

Overall, I thought that the story line was a good one, but I am offended that these film makers, with all of their resources and money, could get these simple and minor details completely wrong. (Sergents stripes cost about $2.00 at your Military Clothing and Sales Store on any Military Installation world wide!)

Rating:
Summary: Basic - Twists and turns!
Review: Taken as a whole, this movie is a pretty good one, with plenty of plot twists and turns that aren't too transparent or predictable; for the better part it will keep you guessing as to who the real killer or killers are. While I must admit that I've never really been a big John Travolta fan, I would have to say that his performance in the movie was better than his norm. Samuel L. Jackson's performance is, albeit brief, poignant and in good keeping with his usual high standard of performance. Connie Nielsen does a wonderful job of playing a Provost Marshall. With actors of such high caliber and a high profile director like John McTiernan, whose work includes "Die Hard", "Predator", "The Hunt for Red October" and other such high profile films; this movie does move along at a high pace and it is a well told story.

Conceptually this movie is highly plausible, the plot is well written, the actor's performances are well done and the soundtrack is well suited to the movie. I do have one major problem with this film though. Without searching the credits, I'm going to have to make one of two assumptions about whether or not the filmmakers hired a technical consultant with knowledge about the United States Army or not. I'm guessing here that they didn't hire one because if they did, they wouldn't have had a scene where Samuel L. Jackson is wearing BDU's (Battle Dress Uniform), yelling and screaming at his soldiers, with them calling him Sergeant and then you look at his collar and he's wearing the rank of a Specialist, which is a junior enlisted member, "below" the rank of Sergeant. Later of course, he's wearing the stripes of a Master Sergeant which would be in accordance with how he was being addressed. Then there is the issue of a Ranger squad having a female as a member. While the films producers addressed this, quite briefly, in one of the special features, where they basically said that they knew she didn't belong, but they threw her in the bargain anyway. These two issues and the "soldiers" referring to their ruck sacks as packs, instead of "ruck," blew a lot of this films credibility with me, a soldier with several years in the Army.

The premise:

Samuel L. Jackson plays a Ranger Master Sergeant, in Panama, prior to our pulling out that country, and he's in charge of training what looks like a platoon of Rangers in jungle warfare. As the movies main title rolls, we see Jackson and a squad of his, in a Huey (an aircraft long since relegated to the National Guard), flying over the canal, preparing to drop in and run an exercise, all the while, a hurricane is raging around them. The scene cuts to another helicopter searching for the Ranger squad which is well over due for their check in and then they spot one Ranger carrying another and being shot at by another of the Rangers. Here is where the murder/mystery kicks in and the Colonel, played by Tim Daly, calls in John Travolta to interrogate the witnesses to determine what happened out there in the field.

What follows from this point is an intriguing movie that gets rather fascinating as the plot carries forward and you're trying to figure out "whodunit." Outside of the "annoyances" of improper Army uniforms, terminology and tactics, this movie is good film to watch. {ssintrepid}

Special Features:

- Director's Commentary
- Filmographies
- Theatrical Trailers

- Featurettes:
* Basic: A Director's Design
* Basic Ingredients: A Writer's Perspective