Directed by John McTiernan. 95 minutes.
Starring John Travolta, Connie Nielson, Samuel L. Jackson,
Giovanni Ribisi, Taye Diggs, Tim Daly, and Brian Van Holt. Released by
I often worry when writing reviews that I, at times, give away too much of the plot that readers might want to find out for themselves when watching the actual movie. I have no such fear upon writing my review for the new thriller Basic because, for me to give away important plot elements, I would first have to be able to comprehend them. There have been times, I admit, when I may have missed out on the meaning of a particular film (which is often the result of the film’s inability to keep my interest enough to decipher that meaning) or lost track of various plot elements and twists and I either want to view the film again or discuss it with someone who believes that they know what I missed. Here is a film whose complete comprehension would seem nearly impossible and I’ll be damned if I can actually find someone who can fill me in on what occurs in its narrative. As I walked out the theater, most of the audience members were scratching their heads. This is, perhaps, the most convoluted film I have seen in quite some time.
At the film’s beginning, though not the story’s beginning,
we briefly witness a routine training operation that has gone wrong. So wrong,
in fact, that it has left several soldiers in training, as well as their
superior officer, the much-hated Colonel West (Samuel L.
Travolta arrives and, of course, gets directly to work, attempting to “get into” the soldier’s heads and find out what happened. Director John McTiernan obviously watched Kurosawa’s Rashomon a few times before getting behind the camera for this one because the story plays out like a military version of that story. Just not as well, mind you. The soldiers give Travolta stories so conflicting (and they change continually) that you might think that they are attempting to pull some sort of elaborate April Fools joke on him (ironically, the film was released just three days before April Fools’ Day, so what does that mean, hmm?), but he seems to buy it. Without digging much further, or should I say, without being able to dig much further, Nielson and Travolta attempt to Get to the Bottom of Things by badgering the two hostile witnesses.
All that has happened up to this point, though a bit silly and occasionally overacted, has been somewhat intriguing. I admit that I was curious to see what actually happened and where the screenplay would take me next. No such luck. The film takes off into undecipherable territory. There are enough trick endings here to make The Usual Suspects, The Sixth Sense, and Memento blush and, perhaps, the film would make more sense on DVD if the filmmakers were to release it as some sort of Choose Your Own Adventure movie with multiple endings. As it stands, it lacks sense the further it goes. The last fifteen minutes of the movie remind me of those old episodes of Scooby Doo, where the villain has his mask pulled off and he curses the heroes. In Basic, numerous masks are removed, only to have other masks on underneath them.
All of this is sort of a shame because I am convinced that director John McTiernan has some more good films under his belt. In the late 1980s and early 90s, he directed Predator, The Hunt for Red October, and Die Hard, which has, in a way, set the standard for modern action films. His latest batch of movies has not reflected the stronger earlier work that he did. In the last four years, he has given us a mediocre remake (The Thomas Crown Affair), a thundering mess (Rollerball), and a silly Michael Crichton adaptation (The Thirteenth Warrior). And now this. I hope for better next time around. Basic is a noble attempt, it just suffers from a basic problem that I often relate to modern thrillers- it doesn’t know when to just end already.