Basic

Rating:
Summary: This is a great movie with more than a plot....
Review: This was a great movie. I just watched it on DVD and I was mad at myself for not going to see it at the movies. The plot keeps you more than interested. You feel like a detective tring to figure out the truth. The ending was amazing. Many movies give you an ending that is exciting, but you figure it out before the movie is over. Trust me that is not true for this movie. Some of the others said there were to many plots, but if you like something that will keep you guessing and engaged you will love it. I am sure you will love this movie and never figure out the ending and it will make you watch it again. I loved it.

Rating:
Summary: I got disapointed at the end...
Review: this movie is very enjoyable, but in the end, I felt like when I was watching "The Usual Suspects". in the end, we figure the whole movie was bogus, and that all the plot was a bunch of lies! The first end of the conspiracy is great!! the second was obvious that Styler was in it...but the 3rd..blows away the whole movie...it ruined the movie in my opinion! thk u

Rating:
Summary: Why they think we are so na?ve?
Review: There isn?t really much to talk about; it is a very twisted plot that you may simply twist it again to produce another 10 or 15 minutes or un-twist it once to make a 50 minutes episode of a bad TV series; and if you want to go for 180 minutes' movie? It is still possible; you may simply re-invent another doubled personality (Samuel L. Jackson or John Travolta this time) and we run into the circle once again.
One explosion that has been repeated 3-4 times in the movie (I lost the count) to restart the story; and in each time (beginning), there is a missing knot and a weak re-sequence of the incidents. Oh, but the sound of the explosion was well-produced!

Rating:
Summary: More twists than a bag of twizzlers....
Review: First off I would like to state that despite any flaws this movie contains it is still a joy to watch. John Travolta is excellent in his role, and the rest of the cast plays their parts well enough so that the story doesn't suffer from that aspect. The movie is filmed brilliantly with just the right amount of darkness on the scenes to add that feeling that something is being hidden from you. And it is.

This films main problem lies in the fact that you are lead into a dazzling investigation about the deaths of several soldiers on a training mission. You hear sides, you form ideas, and then you realize that none of that even matters. It is that element alone that takes away heavily from this movie. As you travel through this deep and dark military atmosphere in your mind you go through so many twists that you are anticipating this great slam bang ending. It is as that point when you recieve a soft curb in the road that gradually tells you that nothing you've learned on this trip has any bearing on the outcome of the film, and you come face to face with something you saw coming the whole time.

I am not saying that this movie completely destroys itself in it's final moments. It doesn't exactly leave you with a bad taste in your mouth, just a feeling that your candy has lost some of it's flavor. All in all this is a very enjoyable film, that fails to deliver that final knockout punch you were waiting for...

Rating:
Summary: The first whodunit I haven't been able to figue out!
Review: BASIC has taken a lot of beatings by critics and such. I'm not really sure why. This is a great whodunit film. It's the first film like it that I haven't been able to figure out before the movie reveals all it's cards since I can't remember when.

This is also the first time I have liked John Travolta since FACE/OFF. That John Travolta has been missing from film for to long. With BASIC, once more, he has regained his cool.

BASIC is a good, solid thriller with an amazing cast. So check it out and watch close. I guarantee you can't figure out what's what before the movie lets you in on the secrets iself.

Rating:
Summary: Great movie with plenty of twists and turns
Review: Basic is an excellent military thriller that will keep you guessing from beginning to end. After a Rangers training mission goes horribly wrong, an interrogator is brought in to try and find out why only two of seven soldiers came back from the mission. Joined by the Provost Marshal of the base, the interrogator, Tom Hardy, goes back and forth between the two survivors who both have their own stories of what happened in the Panama jungle. Much of the story is in flashback as we see what possibly happened during the failed mission. This story has so many twists and turns that you really need to watch this movie twice to fully appreciate it. Basic will have you asking yourself questions about why this happened or was that possible for days after watching the movie. The ending is perfect for the movie. I can almost guarantee that you will not see it coming.

John Travolta gives an excellent performance as Tom Hardy, DEA agent and ex-Army interrogator brought in to find out what happened during the mission. You can tell just by looking that he enjoyed making this movie. Connie Nielsen plays Julie Osborne, Hardy's parnter during the investigation. She is very good as the story unfolds before us. Samuel L. Jackson is also good as Sergeant Nathan West, the sadistic leader of the Rangers on the mission. The movie also stars Tim Daly, Taye Diggs, Brian Van Holt, and Harry Connick JR all who give very good performances. The DVD offers widescreen presentation, trailers from several movies including Basic, and two featurettes that shine some light on the twists and turns of the plot. This is a great military thriller that will keep you riveted throughout the movie. The ending has to be seen, so I will not tell anything about it. Check out Basic for a great ride of a movie!

Rating:
Summary: had the potential
Review: this movie had the potential to be a great movie. it failed. the plot seems great but it's just average for a murder mystery. i liked it up until the ending and then i was like what the hell just happenned. i don't get it.

Rating:
Summary: Didn't make a lot of sense but I liked it
Review: Summary:
Hardy (John Travolta) is an ex-Ranger posing as a DEA agent in Panama. When a training mission supposedly runs amuck, his old friend who is now in charge of the military base, Styles (Timothy Daly), ask him if he can come help sort things out.

Arriving at the base, Hardy meets Osborne (Connie Nielsen (I)) who is either an attorney or an investigator that has been assigned to the case. Hardy immediately begins using some unconventional methods to get information out of soldiers involved, but the two soldiers that made it back to camp after the mission are mixing lies with truths. Dunbar (Brian Van Holt) is the one soldier who made it out physically unharmed, but he doesn't want to talk. Kendall (Giovanni Ribisi) was shot in the leg but seems to have a number of other psychological problems that he is dealing with as well.

As it turns out, the problems with the mission revolved around a drug operation that was being controlled by someone on the base. As Hardy and Osborne delve deeper, they find out that another of Hardy's old friends and Osborne's former lover, Vilmer (Harry Connick Jr.), was involved.

Once they think they've gotten the story straight Hardy leaves only to be followed by Osborne who is still suspicious. And, kind of rightfully so because Hardy ends in the company of Dunbar and most of the rest of the missing soldiers. As it turns out, Hardy belongs to a secret group, Section 8, that was set up for these kinds of missions - to bring down drug traffickers.

My Comments:
When you really start thinking about the movie you realize that it doesn't make much sense. Why would Section 8, led by Hardy, go to all this trouble just to bring down a drug operation when they already seemed to know everything that was going on? The story superficially seems to be pretty cool and I have to admit I liked the twist at the end that Hardy and the others were actually good guys and not bad guys, but it doesn't actually make any sense. What's more, the director employs a number of tricks to throw you off the track, including a number of sequences playing out the lies that were told by Dunbar and Kendall, but they are actually just lies and don't reveal what really happened. Strangely, when the movie ends you realize that you don't ever know exactly what happened, you just kind of think you do, but it's never fully revealed.

As for the acting, I thought it was decent. John Travolta was pretty good in this role. He's actually a fairly versatile actor and I like watching him. Samuel L. Jackson, who plays the character of West in this, was also good, but that is because he can only play violent characters well. Connie Nielsen was also pretty good, but her performance sadly paled in comparison to Travolta's, even though he isn't going to win an Oscar for it. The rest of the cast was okay, but for the most part pretty trivial. Giovanni Ribisi played a convincing drug addict, homosexual soldier and Harry Connick Jr. wasn't bad either, but those are really the only other people worth mentioning.

Overall, if you can look past the fundamentally flawed story and just try to enjoy the movie at a superficial level you'll probably like it. If you can't let the problems with the story go, then you definitely won't enjoy this movie. I liked it because of the twist at the end, but I probably should have seen it coming. Anyway, I'd recommend it, but not very highly.

Rating:
Summary: Great Movie among the recent garbage that is out there
Review: I just watched this movie, and while it was very enjoyable and made me think, the ending just dragged on a little bit too long. However, this was necessary to keep you guessing and a few short video edits could dramatically change ending and thus the whole meaning of the movie. Definitly worth watching

Rating:
Summary: A military murder mystery that does not stand up to scrutiny
Review: I almost always watch a film twice, even if I have to wait for it to come out on video or DVD for the second viewing. I can distinctly remembering being aware that I enjoyed watching "It's a Wonderful Life" more the second time around with all the ways that Frank Capra set up the nightmare sequence at the end. Since then I have enjoyed watching films a second time to appreciate how stories and surprises are set up. After watching "Basic" I was really looking forward to a second viewing to appreciate how this one set off the dramatic payoffs at the end. Having listened to John McTiernan and James Vanderbilt talking about the directing and writing of "Basic" I wanted to really pay attention to how they set me up, because I never saw the end of this one coming. But once I finished watching the film a second time I realized something rather depressing: I never had a chance. On the one hand I like the fact I did not see the ending of this one coming; but while there are hints that point to the resolution there is only the empty feeling of being tricked, not the joy of having been played.

"Basic" is a military murder mystery involving a number of deaths in a Rangers training exercise in the rain soaked jungles of Panama. Samuel L. Jackson plays the drill sergeant from hell and John Travolta is the former army officer called in to investigate by an old buddy. The film has been compared to both "Memento" and "Rashomon," and both comparisons are faulty. "Memento" was brilliantly constructed and the audience understood exactly how it was being played. In "Basic" you are fooled, not because you have been tricked, but rather because you have been lied to. "Rashomon" had different characters telling their own decidedly different version of the same event, which is certainly a key part of "Basic," and in both films you do get the truth at the end. But when you watch "Rashomon" a second time you understand why each character tells the story that they tell; the "lies" or "self-deceptions" make sense in that they present the teller in the best light. But in "Basic" the lies are intended primarily to confuse the audience. Which they do. All we can assume is that each telling of the tale is closer to the truth, but even that knowledge does us no practical good.

This is disappointing because we are talking a movie directed by McTiernan and starring Travolta and Jackson and we would expect something better. However, after listening to the various interviews on the DVD I can see what happened. McTiernan and Travolta were impressed with Vanderbilt's script, but the director objected to the fate of Jackson's character and Travolta was not happy with what happened to his own character. Consequently, the second half of the script was rewritten to make everybody happy. However, when you are talking about a carefully constructed murder mystery, these sorts of revisions clearly turned what might have been a delicate mechanism into a cinematic bulldozer.

Maybe you will not be offended by the way it all works out. "Basic" is certainly compelling, not only in the way Travolta's character of Tom Hardy interrogates various witnesses to what happened out in the jungles of Panama, but also the way he banters with Captain Osborne (Connie Nielsen), the young officer who has the misfortune of being the closest thing the base has to an investigative officer. The cast is excellent, with Giovanni Ribisi, Taye Diggs, Brian Van Holt, Tim Daly, and Harry Connick, Jr. running around tangling with Travolta and Jackson. To be fair, I did not really understand how badly I had been had until I watched the film a second time, but "Basic" should have been the real thing and it is not.