Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8377 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-01-19
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 98 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Basic is a military mystery that offers multi-layered deception as its dramatic raison d'etre, but with plenty of machismo attitude as 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 enamoured 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. --Jeff Shannon

DVD Description
John Travolta is Tom Hardy, ex-Army Ranger-turned Drug Enforcement Agency agent, a hard man with a dark past. Hardy is drawn into a mystery as wild as the hurricane-ravaged jungles of Panama when he is ordered to investigate the disappearance of a legendary Special Forces instructor, Sgt. Nathan West (Samuel L. Jackson) and several of his elite team. What happened out there? Hardy intends to find out – at any price.

Deception proves to be a dangerous weapon as Hardy unravels the truth with shocking consequences. From the director of Die Hard, Basic delivers all-action thrills with an all-star cast, including Connie Nielson (Gladiator), Giovanni Ribisi (Gone In Sixty Seconds) and Brian Van Holt (Windtalkers).

Special Features

• Basic Ingredients - writer’s featurette
  
• Director’s Design featurette
  
• Trailers and TV / radio spots

DVD Technical Information:

• Language: English
  
• Subtitles: English, English HOH
  
• Running Time: 97 mins approx.

Customer Reviews

Dark and twisty
Twist-wise this is a heckuvagreat movie. It's a steaming, down and dirty whodunnit-to-who under the guise of an army training exercise gone wrong. A Special Force team goes into the jungles of Panama, under the supervision of Samuel L. Jackson (West,) but they don't all come out. The onus of finding out what happened falls on Connie Nielsen (Osborne), but then Tim Daly (Styles) brings in John Travolta (Hardy) to take over the investigation.

It's not Travolta's best role, but he does a passable Hardy, the great inquisitor. Connie Nielsen steals most of the movie, even though her accent grates on the nerves sometimes, but otherwise she's got what it takes. Timothy Daly is good for most of the movie (until the end), and there just isn't enough Samuel L. Jackson to go around.

Poor Giovanni Ribisi - he must be really tired of being type-cast by now. He plays the same role, once again, for the umpteenth time.

My problem with the movie is that a lot of the scenes are shot out of focus and in the dark - so it's hard to figure out who's doing what to whom most of the time. (My copy didn't have sub-titles, and the close-captioning was pathetic, so that didn't help much)

Any attempt to summarize the plot would contain spoilers, so I won't. Spending a few hours on this 3.5 star movie, wouldn't be time wasted.

Amanda Richards

An awe-inspiring, intellectually challenging thriller
There is nothing basic about Basic. I thought this movie was superb; maybe I'm easier to please than a lot of the people who criticize the script because I found this to be one of the most intelligent, mesmerizing, blow-your-mind movies I've ever seen. It's a rare treat to find a movie that is not completely predictable these days, and Basic takes unpredictability and surprise to unheard of levels. There was one small aspect of the saga I successfully predicted early on, but the rest of the twists and turns this movie takes had me doing mental gymnastics. Every time you start to think you've seen at least a shadow of the light, this movie rips the rug back out from under you and plunges you into even darker depths of confusion and doubt. Best of all, this elaborate plot actually holds together, which is really just amazing. Basic is a movie that makes you think, and I have no problem admitting that I was often at a loss as to what was really going on; Basic did not insult my intelligence in any way shape or form; it challenged it constantly and delightfully humbled me in the process.

At the center of the story is a Special Forces training mission that goes horribly awry. Only two of six soldiers make it out of the Panamanian jungle, one of whom is injured and the other of whom isn't talking. The base commander Styles (Timothy Daly) calls in his old buddy Hardy (John Travolta) to interrogate the witness because he feels the job is over the head of Army investigator Osborne (Connie Nielsen). Before the feds get involved, Styles wants to know why the unit leader Sgt. West (Samuel L. Jackson) and four soldiers are lying dead somewhere out in the jungle. Hardy is a former Ranger who served under and hated West, but he is now an agent with the Drug Enforcement Agency. Hardy gets the one soldier to tell his version of events, only to hear a much different story from the injured soldier when he wakes up in the hospital. So begins a quest for the truth that has Hardy and Osborne running back and forth between witnesses, discovering unexpected aspects of the case such as the existence of drug-smuggling operations being carried out inside the base and hospital, and discovering that the big fish they are striving so hard to reel in is one big whopper indeed.

Do things become confusing? That's affirmative, but I see this in a positive light. This movie makes you stop and think, turning over what you have heard in your own mind not so much to predict the future as to merely stay caught up with the twists and turns you have just seen revealed before your very eyes. In the final analysis, one or two little aspects of the presentation, which occur largely in the form of dream-like flashbacks, may have a weak leg to stand on but never come close to collapsing or falling over. Some will probably be tempted to just throw their hands up in the air and give up trying to understand everything, but those who love a challenge, especially one presented in such a theatrical and awe-inspiring way, will find themselves energized and inspired to a degree few movies can hope to duplicate. For my money, Basic is one of the most intelligent, suspenseful thrillers I've seen in a long time.

Poor showing
Having seen the trailer for Basic, I was quite excited about the reunion of Pulp Fiction heroes John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson, and the movie Basic seemed to be an interesting one as well. Unfortunately the promise of this movie has fallen seriously short.

In Basic, we follow ex-Ranger and master interrogator John Travolta who is called in to investigate what happened in Samuel L. Jackson's training exercise which left only 2 survivors, one of which is wounded. What follows is a series of flashbacks, but the story being told each time by someone new. It has the potential for a clever way to tell the tale, but instead turns out to be annoying and confusing. Later we learn that drugs are involved, and that almost every single character including Travolta himself is hiding something from the investigation. It's all highly confusing indeed.

I tend to like complicated films, which deliver an exciting and unpredictable twist. But by the same token, I hate those films which are made to look more complex than the storyline actually is. Basic falls perfectly into that character. Definitely not a film to watch, at least not without a notebook and pen to keep abreast with the convoluted plot.