Basic Reviews

"Murder is basic," says Army Ranger-turned-DEA agent Tom Hardy (John Travolta), but making a RASHOMON-inspired thriller, well, that's complicated. A mare's nest of omissions, half-truths, plausible fictions and out-and-out lies are brought to life in contradictory flashbacks; unfortunately, this doesn't have the effect of making the plot's twists and turns gripping, just convoluted. Six Ranger candidates and their sergeant, the roundly despised Nathan West (Samuel L. Jackson), head into the Panamanian jungle on a training exercise in the middle of a raging hurricane. The following day, when they fail to check in, base commander Col. Styles (Tim Daly) goes looking and finds three soldiers: one dead, one wounded and the uninjured third defiantly mute about what went on the night before. West and the other three trainees are missing and presumed dead. With a mere six hours before the survivors are whisked off to Washington, Lt. Capt. Julia Osborne (Connie Nielsen), is stymied by Dunbar (James Van Holt) and unable to talk to the wounded Kendall (Giovanni Ribisi). So Styles calls in an old friend, Hardy, who's got some time on his hands since he's under internal DEA investigation on suspicion of taking bribes from drug dealers. Master interrogator Hardy gets Dunbar talking, then elicits a second, contradictory account from the heavily sedated but newly conscious Kendall, gay son of a high-ranking military muckety-muck who'll do just about anything to neutralize a scandal. The more Hardy and Osborne pick at the knotty mystery, the more disturbing threads pull loose: The specters of sadism, fragging, drugs, homophobia, corruption, racism and flat-out craziness overshadow the investigation, and Hardy and Osborne must ask themselves how far up the command chain the rot goes. Once upon a time, director John McTiernan once knew how to make hard-driving action films like PREDATOR, DIE HARD and THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER (though his ROLLERBALL remake suggests he's forgotten that skill set), but shows no flair for manipulating multiple, incompatible narratives in a way that's both clear and suspenseful. Each jungle flashback is more chaotic than the one before, necessitating maid-and-butler recaps of what actually happened. As the mismatched interrogators, Travolta and Nielson seem to be in two different and incompatible movies. He's having a fine old larky time, mugging and quipping and striking poses that show off his firmed-up physique, while she's laboring under the misconception that she's in a gritty thriller and comes off like a humorless stomp on Travolta's buzz.