MOVIE REVIEW

Basic  (2003)

Starring: John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson
Director: John McTiernan

Rating: R

Studio: Columbia

Review Posted: 4.13.03

Spoilers: Minor

Reviewed by Sara Michelle Fetters

"A Basic Mess of a Screenplay Stops Travolta Film Cold"

Basic is your basic over-complicated mess. Too much plot by half, too frantic by a third and too highly-strung in the performance department by one of its talented superstars, director John McTiernan’s latest is another of his more and more regular misfires. Granted, it’s not Rollerball, and that in itself could be considered a small blessing. Unfortunately, it’s only a small one, but I guess I shouldn’t be too picky.

Wait a second here. I’m a film critic. I get paid to be picky. That being the case, let me just say right now I was profoundly disappointed in Basic, and no amount of glossy production values or snappy visual pyrotechnics is going to change that.

DEA investigator Tom Hardy (John Travolta) is a man blessed with ability to ferret out surprises before they happen. He’s uncommonly good at interrogation and knows how to get to the truth faster than just about anyone. Just don’t ask him how he does it or question his ethics doing so. In Hardy’s world, the ends justify the means, and getting to truth means using all the resources he has at his disposal. Unfortunately, he’s also an alcoholic mess, and not exactly the fittest man for the job like he once was.

So when he’s called in to lead an investigation into the disappearance of an elite military unit in the Panamanian jungle, he’s as much surprised as Julia Osborne (Connie Nielsen), the lieutenant in charge is. While the two do the requisite verbal sparring before gaining a mutual trust and like for each other, soldiers who may or may not be involved in the murders and disappearances come parading through like a traveling sideshow.

At the center of the firestorm is Sgt. Nathan West (Samuel L. Jackson), a leader of men roundly despised by those he’s been chosen to lead. Vicious, demanding and cruel, he could be the mastermind behind the whole thing. But, just the same, he could also be set up by the men in his unit who hate him the most and Hardy and Osborne only have a few hours to figure it all out before the proverbial poop really hits the fan.

Basic is a film like The Usual Suspects, Courage Under Fire and Memento where things are all told in flashback and we can never be sure that the information we’re being given is the actual truth. In fact, James Vanderbilt’s (Darkness Falls) screenplay goes around and around on itself so many times, by the time the fourth person started telling the same story in a completely different way I found myself scrounging through my backpack for something to throw at the screen. At least in those other films, the scripting slight of hand ended up making sense when you went back to the beginning and put it all together. Here, that’s not remotely the case, and putting Basic together is like trying to put together one puzzle using the pieces from six completely different other ones.

Jackson doesn’t really help matters. The long awaited reunion between Jackson and Travolta doesn’t amount to more than just a few scenery-chewed scenes, and the rest of the time he’s so flamboyantly over-the-top that West becomes a complete caricature. Think Jack Nicholson’s Col. Jessep from A Few Good Men but ramped up about ten degrees and you’ll start getting the idea.

True, the rest of the cast is uniformly good. Travolta does seem to have a real handle on Hardy, bring far more depth to the stereotypical detective than the role probably deserves. Nielsen gets far more to do here than she did in The Hunted and Basic is all the better because of it, while good actors like Tim Daly, Giovanni Ribisi, Taye Diggs, Dash Mihok and Harry Connick Jr. all turn in commendable supporting turns.

In fact, almost everything about Basic really is top-notch. McTiernan went all out in bring in veteran technicians to design and shoot the picture, and it shows in nearly every frame. If only that insanely stupid script wouldn’t keep getting in the way. At a certain point, when it is clear everything I was shown in the first third or so was going to turn out to be complete hogwash, I got the feeling the director knew his ship was starting to sink. Suddenly, everything is gets turned up a few notches and McTiernan does his best to hide with directorial flourish the mess of plot Basic is stuck in.

But it’s a lost cause. Vanderbilt’s script is a complete bust and it is really hard to think no one noticed this fact before cameras started to role. By the time red herrings started falling from the sky, I just couldn’t take it any more. It all was quickly turning into nonsense, and with a conclusion that had nothing to do with almost any frame of the movie that preceded it, this movie was doing all it could to bring my blood to a complete boil. In fact, if Rashomon set the eternal standard for just this type of storytelling technique, here’s hoping the anemically plotted Basic ends this Kurosawa cribbing for good.

If I were cruel, I’d give away the "twist" ending of Basic right now as to save you all the ten dollars you might spend on seeing it. Unfortunately, I’m just not that type of critic, and for all my wanting to see this movie sabotaged, I just can’t bring myself to be the one to do it.

Film Rating: 2 out of 4

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