The disappearance of a military leader and the death of four of his men leads two investigators to wade through a morass of deceptions and half-truths in search of the facts in this thriller. Sgt. Nathan West (Samuel L. Jackson) is the leader of an elite team of U.S. Army Special Forces operatives known as the Army Rangers; West is known as a highly effective officer, but one with a short temper and aggressive attitude who is not well liked by his soldiers. During a seemingly routine training
exercise in Panama, a hurricane sweeps in, and four of West's six men are dead, while West himself seems to have vanished. Eager to get the facts behind what happened, Col. Bill Styles (Tim Daly) assigns Capt. Julia Osborne (Connie Nielsen) to investigate. However, Osborne is having a hard time getting the two survivors to talk, so Styles brings in Tom Hardy (John Travolta), a former Army Ranger who served under West and became a first-class interrogator; Hardy later became a DEA agent, but left law enforcement after allegations of corruption. Hardy interviews Dunbar (Brian Van Holt), who claims that the four soldiers had been murdered, and West was killed in retaliation. Kendall (Giovanni Ribisi), the other survivor (whose father is a powerful officer) has a very different story of how the five men turned up dead, and it's up to Hardy and Osborne to determine who is telling the truth -- or if anyone is saying exactly what happened. Basic marked the first time John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson appeared in the same film together since their breakthrough roles in Pulp Fiction. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
[Basic] had a great sense of itself and it had a lot of fun taking us from one corner to the next and then spinning us around until we got dizzy and didn't know where we were. I like that.
Best described as military noir, Basic reunites John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson in a kind of Pulp Fiction with rain and fatigues, plus a chaser of Rashomon on the side.
McTiernan's bitten off way more than he could chew, spicing up the Usual Suspects approach with a dash of Rashomon and a little of help from A Few Good Men.
The problem is that we've been given nothing to make us care for any of these people, so when the mysteries unravel there's nothing in the answers that hit us at a gut level.
A estrutura narrativa (obviamente inspirada em Rashomon) é interessante, mas a necessidade de criar reviravoltas surpreendentes praticamente destrói o filme, já que, ao final da projeção, nada mais faz sentido.
Full of twists and turns, but none of them particularly exciting, it's almost a film that tries too hard, the filming, I felt was a little too dark, visually speaking. Watchable, but easily forgettable.
The movie was alright, but I wish they'd not pulled out the oldest story from the book for the ending. As if this weren't enough, its predictable twist is followed by several unpredictable twists. Now, this might be a positive point for some, but it turned me off. Besides being totally unnecessary, these twists were
utterly nonsensical and ruin the ending of the movie. I'd have rather liked the movie as a thriller than as a suspense. Had it ended right before that predictable twist, I guess I'd have liked the movie more.
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