Cast: John Travolta, Connie Nielsen, Samuel L. Jackson, Brian Van Holt, Timothy Daly, Giovanni Ribisi, Taye Diggs, Roselyn Sanchez, Harry Connick Jr.
Director: John McTiernan
Producers: Mike Medavoy, Lee Nelson, Dror Soref, Michael Tadross
Screenplay: James Vanderbilt
Cinematography: Steve Mason
Music: Klaus Badelt
U.S. Distributor: Columbia Pictures
I am confident that I'm not the only movie-goer who is sick to death of clumsy thrillers that try to obscure dumb plots and dumber characters with a series of improbable twists. Basic is the latest such motion picture, and it isn't handled any better than its recent predecessors. The movie tries to offer a surprise around every corner, but, by playing the "what is the least likely thing to happen" game, the viewer can figure out just about every plot contortion before its revelation. That leads Basic to come across as a cheesy, fundamentally unsatisfying experience.
It pains me to mention Rashomon in the same sentence as Basic, but I'm going to do it, because director John McTiernan and screenwriter James Vanderbilt owe a debt to the Kurosawa classic. A key series of events is depicted in flashback, but, rather than being shown objectively, they are presented from different perspectives. Some – perhaps all – of the narrators are unreliable, so we're not sure what is real and what isn't. The problem is that we don't really care. The movie is so superficial that, once the mystery has been unraveled, all we do is shrug and walk out of the theater, slightly irritated at the waste of time and money. (It is worth noting that the prime theme of Rashomon is the ambiguity of "truth." A word as big as "ambiguity" probably never crossed the mind of Basic's writer.)
Tom Hardy (John Travolta) is a DEA agent whose reputation has been sullied by allegations that he has accepted a bribe. While hanging out in Panama waiting for the storm clouds surrounding him to dissipate, he is requested to assist an old friend, Pete Wilmer (Timothy Daly), who runs the local army base. It seems that, during a Ranger training exercise, several men disappeared, including their commander, Sgt. West (Samuel L. Jackson). They are feared dead. The two survivors, Dunbar (Brian Van Holt) and Kendall (Giovanni Ribisi), have to be questioned, but the base's official inquisitor, Lt. Julia Osborne (Connie Nielsen), isn't getting any answers. So Tom, an ex-Ranger who served under West and has a reputation of getting even the least reluctant soldier to talk, is brought in to discover what happened in the dark, rainy jungles of Panama. Predictably, Dunbar and Kendall's stories don't match. So other means of getting at the truth have to be employed.
For a while, Basic keeps the viewer's interest, but there comes a point at which you realize that the movie exists exclusively to play games with its audience, and the screenwriting isn't clever enough to make it seem worthwhile. The more convoluted things become, the more our interest wanes. That's what happens when characters are poorly developed and the storyline doesn't move forward; it keeps going in improbable circles.
The acting is uniformly uninspired. Samuel L. Jackson is entertaining, but he's essentially playing the same badass he often plays. He rants, shouts, and spews profanity, but there's nothing new or interesting about Sgt. West. Lou Gossett Jr. and R. Lee Ermy have essayed the same kind of role, and much better. Meanwhile, Jackson's Pulp Fiction partner, John Travolta, spends most of the film acting smug and self-assured. (This isn't exactly a reunion; the two are hardly ever together on-screen.) He ends up romantically connected with Connie Nielsen (Gladiator), whose histrionics indicate she thought McTiernan was going for high camp. The more serious the scene, the worse she is. Then there's Giovanni Ribisi, whose seemingly endless stream of irritating performances does not end here.
For McTiernan, it's unlikely that Basic will reverse the free-fall of his career. The director, once revered and respected for making a top-notch thriller with an unproven movie actor (Bruce Willis in Die Hard), has ended up toiling in dead-end productions like Rollerball and Basic. For those who don't pay attention, and who enjoy preposterous thriller-like plot twists and lots of scenes filmed in the rain, Basic will hit the spot. Everyone else will find this movie to be basically tiresome and utterly forgettable.
© 2003 James Berardinelli