I thought i'd seen it all from Travolta & Jackson & couldn't believe this beauty of a movie has been put together since 2003. honestly I thought killer heat was the most twisted plot I ever saw but Basic must have been concocted in an utterly crazy & devious mind. thumbs up

source: Basic

Despite that reviews have generally not been so good, I still really enjoyed viewing this film. Closer to the beginning, I wasn't impressed; it seemed too long winded, too complex. But when the mind-games began, I my opinion changed rightly. The acting was superb, by all actors and actresses. I was rightly impressed. The twist at the end really had one amazed and confused. When we all thought we had figured it all out, A final turn occurred that ended the film. The only problem I really saw with this film is that there is no real point to it. It seemed that it was just a film created in order to make us feel that we were "cleverly deceived".

The movie plot, was so smart, that it turned out being stupid. Watching this film with not giving away the story I was saying yeah right every ten minutes. The casting is very PC, it looks and acts more like Star Trek the next generation than real rangers. Watch Black Hawk down to compare. The ending is awful, and John just keeps the money and runs. Will he ruin his career again? Jackson has a strong performance. Not worth even renting. 4/10

A sergeant is killed by one of his men during a training mission and the army tries to find out who did it. But everybody involved has a different story and there is no reason to believe one version over another! And then finally at the end - SPOILER - we find out the sergeant wasn't even killed!!!!! That's a BS movie. Travolta stars in this mess and i never have liked him. Nevertheless for a 50 year old man he looked great. Looked like a 30 year old bodybuilder. His costar is connie nielsen and for some reason the director made her ugly . Why do they do that? How does it improve a movie to have a dog for the female lead? They gave her a real short butch haircut and a uniform that dissolved her figure and she looked like a 12 year old boy. Stupid movie.

After doing couple of little less successful movies Tiernan made this very nicely flowing, plot twisted military crime puzzle starring John Travolta (Hardy) as an investigator, who is digging for the truth of a murder of his old army pal West (played by Samuel L. Jackson). There are several suspect for the killing and we see several different takes on what had happened on that rainy training day in the jungle. This makes this plot wise rather simply film very interesting to the end, even thought the plot twist can become little bit tiring during last couple of minutes, as the ending tries to be perhaps little too clever for its own good. But that is probably the biggest flaw in this other wise good movie, and in the end, it doesn't matter that much, as some viewers might even say, that they saw that coming from miles away. None the less, Jackson and Travolta do good roles in the film and you can easily watch it more than once without a feeling of a nausea.

This is a pretty basic flick. Even though the film boasts plenty of twists and turns the way it is filmed is pretty basic and there's lots of talking resulting in at times quite a boring movie. In fairness, however it did maintain most of my interest throughout as I was concerned with the mystery of it all, but the plot became a little too big for itself in the end and was left both with a feeling of confusion about certain points and with a feeling of disappointment at what seemed quite a contrived ending. Anyway, like I said there's nothing to special about this film in terms of the ways it's filmed and the fact is set in in almost perpetual darkness did annoy me somewhat. Some of the acting was pretty shaky too and each of the characters appeared stereotypical for this sort of movie. Overall, the film is definitely watchable and worth a once over, but in terms of repeat viewings I'd say this is a little to tame to warrant any. 4/10 (2*).

John McTiernan is slowly becoming my least favorite director (see Thomas Crown Affair), but I think he may just be a decent director with the worst taste in screenplays ever. The script really kills the movie here. Its "twists" leave gaping plot holes so big a Humvee could fall though one. And the dialogue and "sexual tension" between Osborne and Hardy is laughable but never humorous. The acting is either over-the-top (Jackson) or non-existent (Travlota, Neilsen). Travlota and Jackson were great in Pulp Fiction, but both men have real trouble saying no to terrible movies (Deep Blue Sea, SWAT, Swordfish, etc...). In its defense, you won't guess the ending--primarily because it makes no sense. Stay away.

Despite its flaws, I love this movie. I must have watched this movie 2 dozen times over the years. It's a B-movie whose plot does not make sense. The things I like about this movie are the chemistry between actors/characters and the film noir mood of the movie. This is a conspiracy movie that has a lot of smoke screens. It is best not to make sense of the plot of this movie as it would require a significant suspension of disbelief. There's a conspiracy/mystery, some characters try and do "resolve" it, and then there's a "satisfying" resolution at the end. Overall, I would recommend it to people just to pass the time.

Sometimes while watching a movie, silly little things happen that stick in your mind and prevent the watcher from enjoying a movie. For example, West (Sam L. Jackson) is wearing specialist rank (E4) while inspecting the ranks at the beginning of the movie. Later, he wears SFC rank (E7). Why couldn't they get the rank correct? Next thing that stuck in my mind was the fact that Osborne (Connie Nielsen) is steering a vehicle without moving the steering wheel, just her hands. Freaky. Then, the movie gets confused with the names. Pike, Dunbar? A flashback occurs and they forget who was who. Overall, I'd give it a seven out of ten. After I got over myself and watched the movie, it wasn't half bad. Hopefully, next time, the film makers will pay more attention to detail.