Basic

Rating:
Summary: Soggy mayhem in the tropics
Review: The principal thought that came to mind as I watched BASIC was how desperately Southern California needs rain.

John Travolta is Tom Hardy, and ex-Army Ranger turned DEA agent cooling his heels in Panama while under investigation for taking a bribe. An old Army pal, the commanding officer of the local Ranger training unit, conscripts Hardy to interrogate a trainee that returned carrying a wounded comrade from a jungle exercise, during which the other four participants were killed, presumably by each other. Among the dead is Sgt. Nathan West (Samuel L. Jackson), a kick-butt and much hated instructor, who ostensibly arranges "training accidents" for chronic losers who don't make the Ranger grade and are too stupid to realize it. Hardy, a trained interrogator, is needed on the case because the local provost officer, Lt. Julia Osborne (Connie Nielsen), isn't up to the task, especially as pressure is expected from Washington since the wounded man is the son of a government big shot.

Much of the run time is devoted to flashbacks, in which the audience sees various versions of the story, as told to Hardy by the survivors, as to what happened out in the jungle. In the aggregate, all versions only muddy the issue. The confusion of it all is heightened by the fact that the apparent murders, starting with Sgt. West's, happen at night in a driving rain storm, and all the participants are decked out in camouflage uniforms and grease paint. The audience, or at least this viewer, never achieved certainty as to who was who and what was what. None of the supporting players outside of Hardy and Osborne established much in the way of screen identity.

And speaking of driving rain, Hardy and Osborne occasionally wander out into it, but they never seem to be even damp once they get back indoors. Even carrying a big umbrella and wearing rain gear, I'd come out of such a storm looking like a drowned dog. The water must have been the Hollywood, fast-drying type.

Travolta's Hardy character is appealing, and it's a shame there wasn't more chemistry between him and Nielsen's Osborne. I spent too much time trying to decide whether or not I should take the latter seriously and what sort of accent she was hoping to achieve. I settled on "not" to the first question, and remained stumped on the second.

There's a major twist at the conclusion which makes things clear - well, only just, perhaps. But, by that time, I was so frustrated trying to cope with the wildly careening perspectives on reality that I didn't care much. I didn't even have the energy to wonder about the cause of wounded soldier Levi Kendall's (Giovanni Ribisi) sudden and dramatic death in his hospital bed, which went completely unexplained.

BASIC struck me as production where the scriptwriters tried to be too clever and, ultimately, couldn't get out of their own way.

Rating:
Summary: I felt cheated
Review: Once again, John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson are the central characters in another military action movie. The plot is as follows: a hard-time sargeant, played by Jackson, comes up with a live-fire drill in the forests of Panama, but the exercise goes terribly wrong; everyone but two of the army soldiers end dead, and the two remaining won't agree on what really happened during the drill. Hardy, played by Travolta, is the ex-army interrogator summoned by the commander of the barracks to solve the mistery.

OK, the premise is good. The film is told in flashbacks, the same scene repeated many times, different according to each and new version of the story, as they come to light. The acting is quite good, especially by Jackson (no surprise here). Direction is also OK, by John McTiernan (Die Hard). And the movie is quite enjoyable, at least until the final twenty minutes, when a series of endless and completely absurd, unbelievable plot twists (full of plot holes) ruin the entire film. If you want to have an idea of the absurdity of the plot, just access the IMDB page for "Basic" and its message board section.

Watching the credits, I realised the screenwriter, a certain fellow named James Vanderbilt, made his debut with "Darkness Falls", which I consider to be one of the Bottom-Five movies I've ever watched. "Darkness Falls" is ridiculous. The screenplay of "Basic" is almost as ridiculous. I really, really don't understand why a cast composed of such good and acclaimed actors say "yes" to such a poor writing.

After the movie ended, I was angry, I felt cheated and I promised to myself I will NEVER watch another movie that has a screenplay by Vanderbilt. I don't like to be treated like an idiot, and that's what this script did to me.

Grade 4.0/10

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining Whirlwind Ride!
Review: The hell of this entertaining movie is that one likes it despite the fact that it is centered around such a preposterous plot that one finds the denouement at the end so unbelievable as to wonder if one had confused a "caper" movie" like "The Heist" for a gritty melodrama in which soldiers and others are butchered, murdered, shot point blank, etc. as are some of the protagonists in this strange tribute to Travolta's sheer star power and screen magnetism. Yet it does work, much along the lines of other preposterous action plots Travolta has been involved with, such as "Broken Arrow" or even "Phenomenon". And as with both of these other previous outings, the intrepid John-Boy surrounds himself with an excellent supporting cast, which helps to frame the action and spin the yarn along toward its unlikely and unexpected conclusion.

Thus, Samuel L. Jackson plays the central figure in the unfolding drama, an unforgiving, unapproachable, and somewhat sadistic Drill instructor who takes the trainees out on a dangerous exercise in which all but two wind up dead. The two left are somehow involved in all that has transpired out in the jungle, and Travolta is called in to help sort it out for an old friend (Timothy Daly), who is now the Base Commander. With the aid of the scrumptious Connie Neilson, the chase for the truth is on. Yet while the viewer is taken on a whirlwind cascade of facts so contrived, confusing, and calculated that one wonders if there is a manufactured maelstrom machine operating here. It is, as they say, an enigma wrapped in a mystery and confounded by a riddle. When one discovers just what is really going on, one realizes he or she has been suckered by the screenplay and the actors, and that according to the director's depiction, nothing is really what it seems to be. It is a neat way to spend a diverting hour or so watching Travolta do his star thing, but nothing anyone could possibly mistake for reality-based drama. Pass the popcorn, and enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: Not your Basic con
Review: I love action movies with a twist. I enjoyed "The Recruit" because even though it twisted and turned, it NEVER HID IT. Gee who can't hide something totally from an audience by just plain not telling them anything to help them decipher what was going on until the end? Was there some good acting? You bet. Was there some good action? Absolutely. Was there a story that I could follow? Maybe, maybe not. Being a Travolta and Jackson fan I expected more. To bad the story was so convaluted, it could have been another hit for them. I follow detective series all the time and I usually know whose guilty long before the end. I didn't get enough clues here to figure out what was up. I thought it kind of cool when I found out at the end, but you know I felt like I was cheated getting their with the rest the movie. I can't see adding this to my collection. Magicians might like it, they don't give up their secrets either. They at least have a good reason not to tell.

Rating:
Summary: Doesn't Add Up
Review: A group of soldiers go on a training mission in the jungle under the command of Sergeant West (Jackson), a military boss form hell very much in the familiar mould of Lee Ermey in "Full Metal Jacket" or Viggo Mortensen in "GI Jane". They are a few hours late back and a search helicopter finds just three of them, Dunbar, Kendall who has been wounded, and Mueller whom Dunbar has just shot. Of the other three and West there is no sign. Dunbar is resistant to interrogation from Connie Nielsen's Osbourne so her CO calls in former military interrogation expert, now under-a-cloud DEA operative Hardy (Travolta) to see what he can do. It's not too long before he has unearthed a version of what happened. But it's not too long after that before he has another. These and later competing accounts of what has occurred are shown in a series of flashback scenes that tip their hat conspicuously in the direction of the mutually contradictory flashbacks in Kurosawa's "Rashomon". As the plot thickens and thickens Osbourne - and the viewer - has on several occasions to completely rethink her whole picture of what she is caught up in.

This film was directed by John McTiernan who knows everything there is to know about how to direct an action movie. And it is directed just as if it was an action movie though of course what it is is a detective story. And, sad to say, McTiernan doesn't really know how to direct a detective story. In an interview included in the DVD, the writer James Vanderbilt lets slip that McTiernan changed the originally scripted ending for a reason that seems astonishingly cynical and misconceived. This means that instead of the last 45 minutes of this containing about 4 major plot twists it now contains about five. And that is about three or four more than these guys can handle. Here is the first rule of twisty endings: the result has to make sense. Think of those nice recent examples, "The Sixth Sense and "The Others". In these movies we are led along through most of the film with a particular understanding of what is going on according to which most of what we see sort of makes sense. Then, at the end, the whole thing is turned on its head and we discover that what was really going on was very different from what we supposed. And when we discover this everything we've seen before suddenly falls into place and starts to make complete sense, albeit of a quite different kind from the sense we'd thought it made, in the light of what we've learnt. So the whole picture has to make sense twice, making at least some sense before and it has to make complete sense afterwards. That is a difficult trick to pull off in a film that only has one twist. With four of five of the things it is all but impossible and would call for something close to genius to bring it off. Sadly, on the evidence of this, Vanderbilt and McTiernan are nowhere near up to it. After about twist number three, I was just left thinking, Hey, if X, Y and Z is what has been happening, what on earth was that all about earlier when A, B and C happened. And what was the point of F, G, and H? And why would so-and -so have said such-and-such to so-and-so? Etc. And as we move on through twists four and five, these questions just get more and more numerous and pressing (It's tempting to document the point in less abstract terms but that's just impossible without a major expedition to spoiler-land.). There's little evidence that Vanderbilt and McTiernan much care that it's all making less and less sense: it's as if they think it suffices to keep assailing the audience with surprises without worrying whether the result is half-way coherent. So, at the point where in a really satisfying detective mystery everything should be falling into place, instead everything is simply falling apart. It just doesn't begin to add up and, in this mystery genre where Mr McTiernan seems so far from at home, that is the one wholly unforgivable failing.

Rating:
Summary: More than Basic
Review: This is a movie that has a lot of action and a few twists.
Who can you really trust in this one. Travolta plays his part very well. What really happened.....that is what you have to figure out.

The interviews/interrogations are intense. Can you piece together where this movie is going. Terrific, simply terrific.

Rating:
Summary: A Movie That is Too Clever by Half.
Review: There's no doubt that Basic is a clever movie, but that's also its weakness. It's literally too smart for it's own good. The script was simply too clever for the director to convey to the viewer without resorting to narrative dishonesty. Therein lies the fundamental problem with Basic that keeps it from being more than just "good". The film doesn't play straight with the audience, and that's one of the cardinal rules of any storytelling that CANNOT be broken without invalidating the entire thing.

Films aspire to be art, but all art must be true. By that standard, this film is not art. Not even bad art. That's not to say the film doesn't have its moments, but it's ultimately for nothing.

It's a film you can watch once and feel slightly cheated. You can then watch it again and learn that definitely you were cheated. Then, you'll never want to watch it again. But you will probably enjoy most of that first watching.

Rating:
Summary: You better follow along in this one
Review: Get ready to go on a roller coster up and downs twist and turns and all around, This movie does just that .John Travolta gets call in for a investion as a ex-army ranger to find out a murder that has happen in the Panama rainforest to a sergeant a army ranger as well (Samael L Jackson).Two rangers make it back to tell their story who's telling the truth, watch closly as the story unravels, you may have to watch this one twice I did , and love it.4 stars one too many twist to be that good!Enjoy.!!!

Rating:
Summary: At least the title is appropriate
Review: An average murder story where the plot is about trying to find who killed the members of a special military unit. John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson get togheter again after "Pulp Fiction", but the movie just goes on forever, endlessly...A souless, pointless thriller whose only interesting element is the ending twist, but not even that can save the state of boredom created by the previous moments. A turkey.

Rating:
Summary: SAM JACKSON & JOHN TROVOLTA ARE BACK!!!!!!!!
Review: This movie has a lot of awesome twists & turns. (YOU CAN'T LEAVE YOUR SEAT) I watched this movie 5 time so I could understand what was going on in some parts. It is a must see movie but, make sure that if you rent it that you get it for 3 to 5 days otherwise you will still be wandering what happened. taye diggs was also & great addition to the rangers ((((HIGHLY RECOMMEND))))