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BASIC Send This Review to a Friend
There are so many convoluted twists in the new action film "Basic" that you may find yourself wondering what the hell really happened by the time it is over. That wouldn't be so bad, except that none of it makes much sense, and the flitting back and forth with flashbacks keeps a Rashamon-like idea going. Whose story should you believe? Will you care?
John Travolta plays Tom Hardy, an ex-Army Ranger who in 1999 has arrived at a U.S. Army base in near the Panama Canal to investigate the disappearance of a super tough, disliked Special Forces officer named West, played mean-spiritedly by Samuel L. Jackson. Something is supposed to have happened during a brutal training exercise in the jungles of Panama while a hurricane raged. Connie Nielsen plays the local investigator, Capt. Julia Osborne, who is a tough cookie and all business. Her seeming unavailability allows for an erotic undertone in the more personal scenes as she and Hardy go about the inquiry.
James Vanderbilt wrote the thickly layered screenplay and John McTiernan directs with an emphasis on action, tension and supposed suspense leading up to the ultimate revelation. The trouble is that none of what goes on is made terribly interesting despite the histrionics of Travolta and the rest of the cast. There's enough happening to make you pay attention, but there is never any feeling of watching something worthwhile. Suffice it to say that if this much deception and corruption at a U.S. military base might in any way be typical, the armed forces would be in one sad state. A Columbia Pictures release.
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