Basic movie review & film summary (2003)

There's a genre that we could call the Jerk-Around Movie, because what it does is jerk you around. It sets up a situation and then does a bait and switch. You never know which walnut the truth is under. You invest your trust and are betrayed.

I don't mind being jerked around if it's done well, as in "Memento." I felt "The Usual Suspects" was a long ride for a short day at the beach, but at least as I traced back through it, I could see how it held together. But as nearly as I can tell, "Basic" exists with no respect for objective reality. It is all smoke and no mirrors. If I were to see it again and again, I might be able to extract an underlying logic from it, but the problem is, when a movie's not worth seeing twice, it had better get the job done the first time through.

The film is set in a rainy jungle in Panama. I suspect it rains so much as an irritant, to make everything harder to see and hear. Maybe it's intended as atmosphere. Or maybe the sky gods are angry at the film.

We are introduced to the hard-assed Sgt. Nathan West (Jackson), a sadistic perfectionist who is roundly hated by his unit. When various characters are killed during the confusion of the storm, there is the feeling the deaths may not have been accidental, may, indeed, have involved drug dealing. A DEA agent named Tom Hardy (Travolta) is hauled back from alcoholism to join the investigation, teaming with Lt. Julia Osborne (Connie Nielsen).

The murders and the investigation are both told in untrustworthy flashbacks. We get versions of events from such differing points of view, indeed, that we yearn for a good old-fashioned omnipotent POV to come in and slap everybody around.

There are so many different views of the same happenings that, hell, why not throw in a musical version? Of course, there are moments that are engaging in themselves. With such actors (Giovanni Ribisi, Taye Diggs, Brian Van Holt, Roselyn Sanchez and even Harry Connick Jr.), how could there not be? We listen and follow and take notes and think we're getting somewhere, and then the next scene knocks down our theories and make us start again. Finally, we arrive at an ending that gives a final jerk to our chain and we realize we never had a chance.