Basic (2003)
Starring John Travolta, Connie Nielsen, Samuel L.
Directed by John McTiernan.
Rated R.
Grade: B
"Everyone is capable of murder."
Like the schemes and plots of its characters, John McTiernan's Basic is an exercise in deception, a movie that piles on about fifteen surprise endings until the later ones begin to entirely negate the earlier ones. It's a neat parlor trick of a movie, fast and exciting while it plays, funny and frivolous when it's over. I usually dislike movies whose sole purpose is to pull the rug out from under me (*cough* The Usual Suspects *cough*), but this one is so goofy and gleeful about it, that I couldn't help but enjoy it.
The trailer might remind you of Rules of Engagement, but don't be silly: this is a thriller and mystery masquerading as a military court-marshal movie. I have even heard comparisons to Rashomon, referencing the way that this movie, too, involves a crime that is revisited in several different versions of the story. The script by James Vanderbilt (Darkness Falls -- oy) involves a group of elite Army Rangers who are dropped off in jungles of Panama in the middle of a raging hurricane for a training mission. The group of six soldiers, driven mercilessly by Sgt. Nathan West (Samuel L. Jackson), are to proceed in teams of two, taking out a set of targets and meeting up in a cabin. Before the men leave the jungle, five out of the seven of them will be dead, and one, the son of a decorated general (Giovanni Ribisi) will be carried, wounded, by the other (Brian Van Holt).
Van Holt's stoic Dunbar and Ribisi's whiny Kendall are in custody, and a speedy investigation is in order. Tom Hardy (John Travolta), an ex-Ranger who resigned the Army after charges of receiving bribes, is called in to assist Lt. Julia Osborne (Connie Nielsen) in the interrogations. Much is made of the fact that Hardy is a civilian, but the base's commanding officer insists that he is the best interrogator they're likely to find. Though at first reluctant to work with each other, Hardy and Osborne begin to peel back layers from the disagreeing, overlapping stories that the two survivors tell them, and uncover all kinds of things they begin to wish they hadn't.
Basic plays like a superb episode of a detective show. Osborne and Hardy go back and forth between their suspects and witnesses, discovering parallels in their stories, phrases that were repeated but shouldn't have been, inconsistencies in the accounts. Eventually, the movie begins to pile on the twists, and some of them don't even make sense considering the others, but the ending ties it up neatly (and, I might add, hilariously) and the movie remains coherent.
This is significant as being John Travolta's first good movie since A Civil Action nearly five years ago. His career seems to come in fits and starts, with streaks of good movies that alternate with streaks of bad, sometimes awful ones. He's perfectly cast here, his character flashy, cynical and sardonic, which fits him like a glove. Few people can deliver a sarcastic, megalomaniacal monologue better than Travolta, and this script provides him with plenty of opportunities. He is matched by Connie Nielson (looking uncannily like Sharon Stone), who has to play the straight woman to his somewhat deranged interrogator.
Maybe just as significant as Travolta's alleged comeback is the return to form of John McTiernan, who has floundered recently with a pair of just-okay movies followed by the wretched Rollerball (though, to be fair, I'm pretty sure that control of the latter was wrested from him when the studio didn't like where it was going). Like Die Hard, the movie that made him famous, Basic is fast and efficient, running a trim 95 minutes and not wasting a second. If nothing else, it might take the 2003 title for "Movie During Which You are Least Likely to Look at Your Watch".
The film is too intent on being tricky to work emotionally, but I don't know if it was supposed to. The plot reverses direction so many times that it sometimes seems like a parody of "surprise ending" thrillers. Basic toes the line between earnestness and facetiousness, and entertains us tremendously in the process.