Basic [2003]
![Basic [2003]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51SBNKRXD4L._SL160_.jpg)
RRP £13.99
Lowest New Price
£1.24
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Suitable for 15 years and over
Warner Home Video (Icon) Release date: Monday 19th of January 2004
Starring:
Connie Nielsen, Giovanni Ribisi, John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Tim Daly,
Director(s):
Format: PAL, Widescreen,
Number of discs: 1
Region code: 2
Running time: 98 minutes
Language: English (Subtitled)
Language: English (Original Language)
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RRP: £13.99
Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review
Basic is a military mystery that offers multi-layered deception as its dramatic raison d'etre, but with plenty of machismo attitude as befitting a semi-effective thriller from Die Hard director John McTiernan. John Travolta stars as an ex-Army Ranger-turned-DEA agent, recruited by an Army investigator (Connie Nielsen) to solve the fratricide of a reviled Sergeant (Samuel L Jackson) who was allegedly killed while commanding a Special Forces training mission in the hurricane-swept rainforests of Panama. Two survivors (Giovanni Ribisi in a showboat role and Brian Van Holt) recall the ill-fated mission as the truth unfolds, Rashomon-style, in a series of repetitive flashbacks. Tricky enough to hold one's attention as it grows increasingly irrelevant, Basic is so enamoured of its bogus ingenuity that its ultimate twist is a letdown. A second viewing might prove rewarding, if only to confirm that it all holds together. --Jeff Shannon
There is no stopping of history
Review date: 2008-09-29 Rating: 10 out of 10
Panama after the Reagan's military intervention. The American armed forces are trying to keep the main passage of south American drug up north to the US under control. But that does not mean it is really what happens. In fact drug is flowing abundantly but not freely. Things have to be organized in the hands of the US citizens here, at least some of them, under a uniform or not. In one of the military special, very special units the sergeant discovers the truth and wants to stop it when on a mission. He will end up dead and several other members too, but the transportation of the drug out of the jungle and onto a plane to the US, along with one of the bodies will nearly succeed, though it will fail because the special agent and the female captain he is teaming with find out some details neither knew that imply the colonel is taking his share to let the drug go through. But nothing is that simple and that captain is going to discover even more and then she will be disarmed - psychologically though not militarily - and the film closes the way it had opened on Ravel's Bolero, that music that is a constant cyclical return of just a few notes. Will she go along with the survivors, and the special agent who seems to be the real coordinator, including of the killing of the sergeant? Difficult to know, though she accepts to eat with the administratively absent ones. It is interesting to go back to these films of an older time. 2003 was the time of another military adventure after a previous one a year before. The film was more or less trying to foresee the future of a military adventure in a foreign country. A real catastrophe because it brings rot right into the deepest inner circle of the republic, the armed forces. Five years later the lesson is clear cut and brilliant. Any military adventure that is based on the invasion of a country in order to bring down the local leader and take him to prison in a way or another for any reason you can imagine, in Panama it was drugs, in Iraq it was weapons of mass destruction, can only end up in rot and a full deception. What did Noriega want to do? Nationalize or take control of the Panama canal? Ronald Reagan when he was the Governor of California said: "the Canal Zone is not a colonial possession. It is not a long-term lease. It is sovereign United States territory, every bit the same as Alaska and all the states that were carved from the Louisiana Purchase. We should end those negotiations and tell the General: we bought it, we paid for it, we build it, and we intend to keep it." When he became the President of the US he toppled Noriega and took control of the canal zone. And in may 2008 the son of the general who nationalized the canal was praised by Bush for all the good work he is doing to develop the canal that is a national enterprise of Panama. You can never stop history. You can slow it down, but not stop it. It will go on in its direction and those who will have tried to stop it and will have slowed it down will also have brought onto the world a dire vengeance. History always has the last word. When you see practically the whole South America in the elected hands of what Ronald Reagan would have called communists you wonder if it was really worth it to invade Panama and to invade Granada and a few other things like that. When we see the Panamanian fiasco thirty years later we can wonder what the Iraqi fiasco is going to be in thirty years. The film is telling us that any invasion of a country produces in the medium run the completely reverse effect than the one expected in the very short run. And in the end it is those who resist the rot, corruption, in other words the innocent, that end up dead in such an adventure.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
Reviews
Such a waste of good talent?
Review date: 2007-12-27 Rating: 2 out of 10
I watched this film twice in the hope of understanding really what the purpose was of actually making it? There are so many holes that can be picked in it from start to finish that I really can't "get it"? Skipping over everything and going directly to where Travolta is called into help Nielsen interrogate the prisoner I assumed it was by the ending to do with the drugs.But I also had to wonder how some guns miraculously had dummy ammo but others not? The ending was just too smart for itself, I can't pretend to say I know what it was/when it was? It was plain daft.Not a single reviewer can say he/she knows what the ending reflects. Amazon may have a policy of NOT criticising other reviewers but if that is the case they in turn SHOULD NOT accept 3 line reviews which say absolutely nothing constructive about the film other than "great film" or similar or 30 line reviews that are full of pompous flowery comparisoms with other films and little about the one in question!
What..
Review date: 2007-12-06 Rating: 10 out of 10
This movie is great !!!!! such an awsome story, and very scray..... lol
Not much "action" but its brilliant
Poor, poor, poor, poor.
Review date: 2007-09-09 Rating: 2 out of 10
An unbelievably poor film. The storyline is far too complicated to follow without a notebook and pen to keep up with what's supposed to be happening and by the time I actually found out what happened at the end, I just didn't care.
There's hundreds of better war films and hundreds of better court room drama/police investigation films out there. This is an attempt to weld the two together, and it's a failure.
Not so simple
Review date: 2007-03-17 Rating: 10 out of 10
hi, this is a film that requires all you're attention or you will not get one bit. it's about some soldiers dropped into the jungle for a training excercise but it all goes wrong, a murder takes place. i don't want to spoil any storyline so i won't tell you any more. it was a lot like "courage under fire". one man(travalta) trying to find out the truth. it has lots of action to keep you interested and isn't a cheesy film with a low budget. it has brilliant actors, (jackson and travalta) so don't miss this. one of my fave war/action films. p.s this does not show any major battle sequences. you won't regret it. thanks.
Product Details/Specifications
Actor(s):
Connie Nielsen
Giovanni Ribisi
John Travolta
Samuel L. Jackson
Tim Daly
Creators:
John Travolta (Primary Contributor)
Samuel L. Jackson (Primary Contributor)
Andy Given (Producer)
Anson Downes (Producer)
Arnold Messer (Producer)
Basil Iwanyk (Producer)
Brad Fischer (Producer)
Dror Soref (Producer)
James Vanderbilt (Writer)
Director(s):
Recording label: Warner Home Video (Icon) Manufacturer: Warner Home Video (Icon)EAN: 7321900953122Binding: DVDNumber of items: 1Format: PAL, Widescreen, Release date: 2004-01-19Number of discs: 1Aspect ratio: 1.78:1Audience rating: Suitable for 15 years and overRegion code: 2Running time: 98 minutesTheatrical release date: 2003-03-28Language: English (Subtitled)
Language: English (Original Language)
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