Basic. Eight Rangers and their drill sergeant fly off in a training mission during a hurricane in Panama. Something goes wrong. Six Rangers and the sergeant are lost, feared dead. Two rangers return. But they won't talk. That is until an outsider is brought in to reveal the truth. Through point-of-view flashbacks featuring blurry camera shots and choppy action, the layers of mystery are gradually unravelled. Sound familiar? It feels so when you're watching it. I kept expecting Jack Nicholson to bark "you can't handle the truth" at any moment.

John Travolta plays Tom Hardy, brought in to uncover what the base investigator cannot. (Deja vu back to General's Daughter when he had to unravel the truth from another murky crime.) This time he's a DEA agent. He's a sleezeball: drunk, accused of taking bribes, you name it, he likely does it. When he arrives on base he's all hard nosed beligerance, he alone can get to the bottom of this matter, so just stand clear. Yeah yeah.

He has to work with Connie Nielson, as Julia Osborne, the base detective, sporting one of the all time worst accents ever. She's in the movie as eye candy, and she fills the role quite well.

Samuel L. Jackson is the drill sergeant. In Hollywood all drill sergeants are cast from the same mold, and there's nothing new here. Hey, maybe they're like that in real life.

The most striking aspect of Basic, however, is the plot. Ouch. This thing has more twists than bag of pretzels on a rollercoaster, most of which are present only to mess with the audience. The twists come thick and fast. You don't have time to deal with one twist before you're in another, so understanding the movie is virtually impossible. No doubt if you did have time to work through the twists you would see just how implausible they are.

I didn't manage to work out which character was which, but in the end it really didn't matter too much. You know the movie is going to mess with you when the base commander--Timoth Daly--pulls Travolta's character aside and whispers in his ear. We're not getting all the vital clues, and you know we'll have to return to this conversation before all can be revealed.

Basic is nothing more than a roller coaster ride. It's fast, pointless, and rather fun. And depending on your constitution, the incessant motion and rapid jerks will either be thrilling or make you nauseous.


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