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Basic, John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Connie Nielsen
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Synopsis of the DVD Movie: Basic, John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Connie Nielsen
Tom Hardy, an ex-Army Ranger turned DEA agent, is drawn into an ever-widening mystery surrounding the disappearance of the feared and often hated Sgt. Nathan West, as well as several of his elite Special Forces trainees on what appears, at first, to have been a routine training exercise during a hurricane in the jungles of Panama. Only two survivors are found, Dunbar, and a badly wounded Kendall, the son of a high-profile Joint Chiefs of Staff official. Neither is willing to cooperate with Capt. Julia Osborne’s investigation. So base commander Col. Bill Styles calls in ex-Ranger Hardy, an old friend and a persuasive interrogator. Osborne disapproves of Hardy who is on leave from the D.E.A. after having come under suspicion of accepting bribes from local drug traffickers. She is also uneasy when she learns that Hardy once trained under West and hates him almost as passionately as his current recruits. With time running out, Hardy and Osborne call a temporary, if uneasy, truce. Hardy cajoles a confession out of Dunbar, who claims that Sgt. West and the missing Rangers have been murdered and their bodies blown away by the hurricane. When they later interview Kendall, he confirms that the other Rangers and West are dead. But, in almost every other way, his story contradicts Dunbar’s. What happened to West and his Ranger team? And what were they really doing out there in the jungle? As each layer reveals more lies and greater deceptions, Hardy and Osborne inch towards the horrible truth about the fate of the missing Rangers.
DVD Movie Rating for: Basic, John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Connie Nielsen
Rating 3 out of 5 stars
Movie Plot of: Basic, John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Connie Nielsen
A marine sergeant (Samual Jackson) takes six of his special troops on a training mission into the rain-soaked Colombian jungles and only two come out alive. When the rescue mission arrives, they see one soldier (Brian Van Holt) killing another and carrying a wounded comrade (Giovanni Ribisi). As the interrogation begins, the soldier refuses to talk to anyone other than another Ranger. The investigating officer (Connie Nielsen) protests, but her commanding officer (Timothy Daly) nonetheless brings in a former Ranger and current DEA agent (John Travolta) to help. The agent is currently on suspension from DEA for allegedly accepting a bribe. From this point on, the plot continues to twist and turn and offers numerous surprises that keeps the story interesting.
DVD Production Details of: Basic, John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Connie Nielsen
Starring: John Travolta, Connie Nielsen, Samuel L. Jackson
Director: John McTiernan
Format: Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby
Studio: Columbia Tristar Hom
DVD Release Date: July 8, 2003
DVD Features:
Commentary by director John McTiernan
Theatrical trailer(s)
Featurettes: "Basic: A Director's Design," "Basic Ingredients: A Writer's Perspective"
Widescreen anamorphic format
DVD Easter Eggs
None
Cast of the movie: Basic, John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Connie Nielsen
- John Travolta .... Hardy
- Connie Nielsen .... Osborne
- Samuel L. Jackson .... West
- Timothy Daly .... Styles (as Tim Daly)
- Giovanni Ribisi .... Kendall
- Brian Van Holt .... Dunbar
- Taye Diggs .... Pike
- Dash Mihok .... Mueller
- Cristián de la Fuente .... Castro
- Roselyn Sanchez .... Nunez
- Harry Connick Jr. .... Vilmer
- Georgia Hausserman .... Pilot
- Margaret Travolta .... Nurse #1
- Dena Johnston .... Nurse #2
- Nick Loren .... Helicopter Pilot
- Cliff Fleming .... Helicopter Pilot
- Steven Maye .... CID Officer
- Jonathan Rau .... G.I. on the Tarmac
- Tait Ruppert .... Jeep Driver
- Timothy S. Wester .... Doctor
- Chris Byrne .... MP
- Curtis Ricks .... MP
- Charles L. Fails .... MP
Photo Gallery of the movie: Basic, John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Connie Nielsen
Click on one of the thumbnails to see the full size, high resolution photographs
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Reviews of the movie: Basic, John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Connie Nielsen
During a routine training exercise, a ruthless army sergeant named West (Samuel L. Jackson) has gone missing, and some of the soldiers under his command (including Taye Diggs, Roselyn Sanchez, and Giovanni Ribisi) have turned up dead. The government calls in Tom Hardy (John Travolta), a DEA agent with a gift for interrogation, to question the two remaining survivors. Along with his shadow officer (Connie Nielsen, `One Hour Photo'), Hardy dives into the thick black muck of dishonor, deceit, and greed to find out just what happened in the Panamanian jungle to a commanding officer that everyone seemed to loathe with equal passion.
Director John McTiernan comes to `Basic' after taking a flat-out beating over his last picture, the doomed `Rollerball.' I didn't have the venom for the roller derby remake that others did, but I recognized that it was an off day for the normally gangbusters director (`Die Hard, `The Thomas Crown Affair'). `Basic ` is troubling to me because it confirms now that McTiernan might be losing his grip on quality, and that without a water-tight script soon, he could become another casualty in the Hollywood war.
`Basic' is an exercise in plot twists and extravagant, undeserved coincidences. It has the shape of a thriller, but it never thrills. It also has the guise of a mystery, but it is a film that would need a long sit down with the screenwriter (James Vanderbilt, `Darkness Falls`) to fully understand. Maybe the film does make sense in the final reckoning (it‘s told in a sort of `Rashomon` style, so illogic can be easily sidestepped if it crops up), but it's also a movie that isn't all the interesting to begin with, thus negating any real desire to sort it out. Filled with a cast that is always reliable, and guided by a director with a fantastic track record, `Basic' amazes with its incompetence and its immobility. This is a picture that should've been great, but in the end, it's a major letdown.
A crucial mistake is made by McTiernan in setting up the characters involved in the central incident. These are six individuals that the audience is supposed to tail for the entire picture, yet the introductions are handled as if they don't matter. The script is filled with requests like `What happened to Dunbar?,' `Did Nunez fire the weapon?,' and `Bring me Pike!' without ever making it concrete who is who. `Basic' is a film shot mainly in the dark and the rain, so the confusion over character names is compounded by the fact that we can't ever see them either. The plot's twists and turns hinge on becoming comfortable with names and faces, and without this element working, `Basic' becomes increasingly tiresome because, simply, the audience is never allowed to sit back and take in the sights without enormous confusion.
Performance wise, McTiernan allows John Travolta free reign to bring his character to life, and his performance remains one of the few bright spots in the film. Travolta looks like he's having fun, which the same cannot be said of the rest of the cast. Young actor Giovanni Ribisi gets away with murder as a young, gay soldier who sounds like Lorne Michaels with a head cold. McTiernan encourages Ribisi to overact wildly, taking away crucial tension and believability from the scenes he appears in. Connie Nielsen has bigger problems in her supporting role. It's not that her performance is bad. In fact, she's great here as Hardy's sidekick, endlessly searching for her own answers to the problem. The role shows real promise for Nielsen, who has had trouble matching her talents to the roles offered her recently (`The Hunted`). However, her character is conceived as southerner, for no real reason at all, and Nielsen continually weaves in and out of her accent, to a point of distraction. How this stayed in the film, right under McTiernan's watchful eye no less, is beyond me.
If you thought The Recruit was full of surprises, Basic will spin your head around. Assuming that cleverness is its own reward, this military mystery shares many of The Recruit's strengths and weaknesses, offering multi-layered deception as its dramatic raison d'etre. Copping plenty of machismo attitude befitting a semi-effective thriller from Die Hard director John McTiernan, John Travolta stars as an ex-Army Ranger-turned-DEA agent, recruited by an Army investigator (Connie Nielsen) to solve the fratricide of a reviled Sergeant (Samuel L. Jackson) who was allegedly killed while commanding a Special Forces training mission in the hurricane-swept rainforests of Panama. Two survivors (Giovanni Ribisi in a showboat role, and Brian Van Holt) recall the ill-fated mission as the truth unfolds, Rashomon-style, in a series of repetitive flashbacks. Tricky enough to hold one's attention as it grows increasingly irrelevant, Basic is so enamored of its bogus ingenuity that its ultimate twist is a letdown. A second viewing might prove rewarding, if only to confirm that it all holds together.
