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John Travolta
Connie Nielsen
Samuel L. Jackson
Tim Daly
Giovanni Ribisi
Brian Van Holt

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In BASIC, John Travolta plays Tom Hardy, a DEA agent called in to investigate some mysterious deaths at his old Ranger base in Panama. One surviving soldier has returned from an arduous training mission, but three others have not, and he refuses to talk to anyone but a fellow Ranger. He talks to Hardy, but the story he tells is contradicted by the other survivor, the gay son of one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Giovanni Ribisi), who is in the hospital recovering from a gunshot wound. Each tells their view of the story, with multiple versions shown in flashbacks. -- filmfan09

01/09/2009 (0 of 0 found this helpful)

Nothing is 'Basic' about is dumb military thriller

The writer of "Basic," James Vanderbilt, has so many twists and turns that the film is impossible to keep up with. I like movies like these, where you see different characters telling their version of one event, but the mistake Vanderbilt makes is that he overuses the plot flashbacks in the middle of other events. It becomes hard to seperate present from past and what's real from what's not. So many revelations happen that I feel like I'm in the middle of the writer's mind, as he comes up with new ideas and tries to squeeze them in time after time after time. There is a limit to how many times you can use "surprise" revelation endings. Vanderbilt uses three of four in a row, piled on top of each other, time after time after time. Just as we think the plot twists are done, and we start to ...

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2/4