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Basic Customer Reviews (1 - 3 of 43 Reviews)

A movie worth watching
Definitely a very good movie, Basic, is a military mystery that brings to the screen the story of a U.S. Ranger training mission gone awry in Panama. Subsequently, an ex-Ranger is teamed up with the base investigator to try and shed light on the mysterious circumstances that led to the near annihilation of the entire squad.
The film combines drama, mystery, action and adventure making it one of the best of its kind.
John Travolta, Samuel Jackson, Connie Nielsen, Giovanni Ribisi, Brian Van Holt, and the rest of the cast have truly outdone themselves with their performances, which are outstanding to say the least! All the actors, without exceptions, give it their 100% and it really shows (the chemistry is AMAZING)!
The plot, the setting, the dialogues, the special effects, and the music are all wonderful!
In short, it is a movie definitely worth watching! Strongly recommended along with Black Hawk Down, A Few Good Men, Rules of Engagement, and Courage Under Fire.


Enjoyable Thiller
Typically popcorn thriller. A little predictable, but nevertheless enjoyable with good performances from Jackson, typical Travolta overacting and Connie Nielsen is a little out of place playing an american captain with an exotic euro accent.

Good twists and turns, and fine editing. A nice Rashoshonan type tale where the same story is told from several point of views and the audience is challenged on which side is the real truth.

Okkkkaaaayyyy....
Sometimes I have a really difficult time distinguishing if I ask too much from media or if I should just go with the flow. Most of those moments come after viewing such movies as this, where when it comes down to the craft-level of the film, there's nothing technically wrong with it, but the fact that it's utterly lacking in any sort of "reason to be" or theme just makes me feel I wasted my time.

A troupe of rangers-in-training and a legendary sergeant are in the midst of a hurricane in the Panama Canal when something goes awry. We don't know what it is at first, but when a surveiling helicoptor notices one of the trainees shooting another, an investigation is started to find out what exactly is going amiss.

The movie itself is filled with people who have shown their ability to perform but don't necessarily guarantee a good performance. Samuel L. Jackson plays one of his typecast roles. John Travolta plays one of his typecast roles (Oh, and having them together in this movie doesn't make it a Pulp Fiction, I can tell you that). Even Connie Nielson, who I like a lot, does her role and doesn't add to it.

Now the point of the movie is something like the point of a Shyamalan movie: let's make a twist and see how good we are at surprising the audience. Now the thing about a Shyamalan movie is, even though his twists are getting rather ridiculous and even though they begin to feel a bit condescending, there's still a point to them. A Shyamalan film has a theme, about fate, about human nature, about death, etc. This film has twists because it wants to surprise. However, to an audience that is used to having twists as a rather generic method of plot development, that leaves a lot to be desired. Especially when such twists happen after a milieu of twists, so that by the time the movie ends you don't really care about any of the characters anymore because they've shedded so many identities that you're forced to believe they don't actually have one.

So we have an action film, by John McTiernan, who has already proven himself to be brilliant (c'mon, Die Hard...); we have performers who've already proven their worth; and we have a script that works out in its own way. Yet none of it really matters. And so even though it's an okay movie, it's still a waste of time.

--PolarisDiB

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