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think the primary reason why "Basic", the new
military thriller by John McTiernan ("Rollerball"),
doesn't make me angry as it seems to have made a lot of movie critics, is
because I don't particularly mind being mislead by a movie. To be sure,
"Basic" is a movie constructed for the single purpose of proving that
you can never go wrong with throwing in as many plot twists as you can. In the
case of "Basic", there are about 10 twists that show up one after
another in the final 20 minutes, and not a single one of them has been hinted at
beforehand.
The point is, if you think you can guess the film's twists,
think again. The screenplay by James Vanderbilt ("Darkness
Falls") is an illusion, and so are the plots and stories within it.
Even when the movie reveals all to the audience, it's just one more twist in a
movie built on the notion of revealing twists. Which is to say, you sit there
waiting for another twist to rear its twisty head, because the film's last twist
makes nearly as much sense as the twist that came before it, and the one before
that, and the one before... Well you get the idea.
Another reason why many critics and movie aficionados find
"Basic" lacking is the duplicitous nature of the screenplay. Movie
fans that pride themselves on having seen a lot of movies like to think that we
can spot a film's twist ending from a mile away. (Take the recent "Eternal
Blood" for example.) And when we're unable to predict the twist, for no
other reason except that the screenplay is bound and determine to cheat, the ego
can get a bit bruised.
I liked "Basic". I liked that John Travolta
("Get Shorty")
is once again playing a smarmy, even cocky, character that seems to have all the
answers without even trying. I also liked that Connie Nielsen ("One
Hour Photo"), sporting the worst Southern accent ever put to celluloid,
really doesn't like having a DEA agent with a crooked past meddle in her
official investigation. I liked that writer James Vanderbilt seems to know
nothing about military protocol, or the law for that matter. Also, I didn't mind
that director John McTiernan and cinematographer Steve Mason seems incapable of
framing the movie without cropping the screen with shadows and darkness.
The plot is this: While out on a training mission in the
Panama jungle, tough Sgt. Nathan West (Samuel L. Jackson) and most of his
Rangers unit go missing. Two are found alive, but one is wounded. A third man is
found dead, killed by one of the two survivors. When base investigator Lt. Julia
Osborne (Nielsen) is unable to elicit answers from the two survivors, the base
commander (Timothy Daly) calls in his old friend Tom Hardy (Travolta), a DEA
agent suspended until accusations of bribery against him are cleared up. The
job: Discover the truth about what happened during the training exercise.
So there you have it. It's a basic premise, and the movie
throws in one of those "multiple versions of the same story" gimmick
ala Akira Kurosawa's "Rashomon" to muck things up. If you like
Travolta, and can stand Nielsen's awful accent (an accent, mind you, that seems
to come and go depending on what location she's at), then "Basic" is a
pretty good movie. It's not a murder mystery, because even the lamest murder
mystery gives you some hints as to the "real story" behind the story.
"Basic" isn't concern with telling the audience a
story. It's only interested in getting one over the audience. Well, not one, but
two, or three...or maybe a dozen...
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