2003, R, 95 minutes

Back in the 1980s, John McTiernan was responsible for great action movies like Die Hard and Predator. Now, in the 2000s, he has turned up two duds - the dreadful Rollerball and now Basic. However, considering the quality of the former, Basic is a step in the right direction.

That said, I still have to put up with this exercise in mediocrity. Basic certainly isn't terrible, but it's not any good either; if I had to describe Basic in one word, it'd be "irksome." The movie goes in so many directions, and is so intent on misleading the audience, that the movie loses focus of any sense of reality. To give it credit, it's not trying to be a straight action film, but I think I'd be much happier with another one of those than with the final result.

Tom Hardy (John Travolta) is an ex-ranger who's currently under suspicion for taking bribes from druglords. "He can get inside your head faster than you can tie your shoe," says one character about him. Hardy is called in because his interrogation skills are needed in questioning Dunbar (Brian Van Holt), one of two survivors of an incident in Panama. Dunbar was part of a training exercise being held there, lead by Sgt. Nathan West (Samuel L. Jackson), and now him and the other survivor, Kendall (Giovanni Ribisi), are being questioned by Hardy and Julia Osborne (Connie Nielsen) about what exactly happened.

We hear two different stories from Dunbar and Kendall, and of course, one of them has to be lying. Or could it be both of them? Once the end credits started rolling, I was seriously dumbfounded. There's no possible way that this conclusion could've been guessed; I thought that some of the stories that were false made more sense than what actually happened.

John Travolta is his usual cocky self as Hardy; we pretty much saw the same character in 1999's The General's Daughter. Samuel L. Jackson is criminally underused - I would've loved to see more of that usual badass attitude (he'd probably make a great drill sergeant). Connie Nielson (from Gladiator) and the others are okay, but nothing close to special. The movie also suffers from the "some character says those exact same words, so the guy that just said those words is bad" syndrome; how would this be any factor in determining one's guilt?

Basic might be okay to watch on cable TV, just to see how ridiculous it is. Probably the best thing I can say about this movie is that at least there's no 20-minute action sequence seen entirely through night-vision goggles (like in Rollerball). I just hope and pray that McTiernan will learn from his mistakes, and use his talents to craft a better movie next time.