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Basic review
:. Director: John McTiernan
:. Starring: John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson
:. Running Time: 1:38
:. Year: 2003
:. Country: USA
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Offering multiple screenwriting combinations which ultimately lead to an unavoidable deconstruction, Basic, a showy exercise with a paradoxical title, follows Tom Hardy (John Travolta), a DEA agent charged with solving the mysterious disappearance of a group of rangers.
With only two surviving witnesses with contradictory testimonies, Hardy and the film ostensibly advance, connecting interrogations and flash-backs while the knots of the narrative unfold faster than Samuel L. Jackson saying "Royal with Cheese". Based on a process established by Akira Kurosowa in Rashomon and definitely very trendy (the TV series Boomtown uses the same structure), Basic multiplies the false tracks and twists, victim of a screenwriter (James Vanderbilt—Darkness Falls) who's very decided to prove to us—even overdosing—his manipulative talents. Head down in a farfetched plot, the unbridled rhythm to which the film subjects us officiates like a smoke screen, assuring that the audience cannot rethink the logic of subterfuge of this prefabricated scenario.
Relegating the characters and the actors to a row of pawns: an inflated John Travolta, an icy Connie Nielsen, almost-a-cameo Samuel L Jackson and Giovanni "look-at-what-a great-actor-I-am" Ribisi, John McTiernan's inspired direction is true the star of Basic. After the disappointing 13th Warrior and Rollerball, victims of unnecessary re-editing, the director dresses this calculated screenplay with a stylized visual, thus counterbalancing the absence of substance and emotion.
While his oppressive camera turns around the suspect and incessantly harasses him during the interrogations, it's especially his vision of the jungle, the metaphor for the world it depicts, that is startling. After the politicized playground of Predator, the filmmaker chose to illustrate the corruption of the army and of man, this time by comparing the jungle to hell: the film is generally shot in darkness whereas the storm creates rage; the reddish glimmers are omnipresent, even the soldier's face is lit up in a diabolical way; the appearances of Samuel L. Jackson's character are ghostly while death is also in the center of the carnival which takes place in the city.
Without ever celebrating the onscreen reunion of Travolta and Jackson, or even daring a small wink, Basic leaves the filmmaker and the actors stuck in the mud, lost deep in the jungle, while the screenwriter slips out to peddle his scripts to Hollywood.
Fred Thom
 Movie Reviews: 1998 - 2011
Movie Reviews: 2012 - present
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