After reading so many negative reviews on IMDB on this one, I was hesitant to watch it, but being a huge fan of Travolta, Jackson and John McTiernan, I decided to give it a try. Though suffering its fair share of flaws, overall, it is a decent film.
The acting ranges from mediocre to good, and features a lot of young faces like Taye Diggs and Giovanni Ribisi, and other familiar ones like Connie Nielsen, Harry Connick Jr., and the pilot from Wings (never did know his name...oh well). What this movie really has going for it is the atmosphere. The scenes of the squad in the hurricane (which, not to give anything away, is the plot of the movie all told in flashback) is very atmopheric, dreadful and appropriately mysterious. We are basically given a who-dunnit mystery told through the mouths of two survivors, each contradicting one another. I won't give anything else away, but the ending really did have me surprised, though pleasant, I felt a little cheated. Don't worry I'm about to tell you why.
What this movie suffers most from is from ambiguous information (that serves as a filler to the plot), poor editing and of course, one plot twist too many. Some movies like The Usual Suspects pulled off these twists with absolute panache...Basic, tries the same thing, but unfortunately, the results are sophomorish. Basic tries to up the ante with the plot twists (over and over and over and over again) but after about the 10th twist in the plot, it gets very tiresome. Sure, the story itself is pretty good, but the main fault was not in the script (if it was a bad script, why would so many talented actors commit to it?), but in the execution. McTiernan was the man back in the day, but with the massive flop, Rollerball, and now the slightly better than average Basic, he may be losing his steam. This movie tried so hard to make the viewer feel like it had outsmarted them...well, anybody can make a plot with an ending that is unexpected, but it takes a real master to tie it all together, and have it flow smoothly. Basic seems very choppy, and is one of the worst flowing movies I have seen in some time. It doesn't give us time to digest the next plot twist, b\c while we are sitting there thinking, A) trying to put faces to the names of the many characters in the flashbacks B) trying to piece together who is telling what and why, C) and are they lying or not, Basic throws another twist right at you. I will give the film credit, after sitting for about 30 minutes after it ended, I could honestly say that it did pull off a plot that had very few holes...but just barely. What I mean is, yes, point A does connect to point B, but it switches directions so much that once you get to point B (the end in this case), you forget how you got there. What this makes is a film that is not very memorable.
Despite the negative aspects, this film is a lot better than I thought it would be, and was an entertaining 2 hours or so. I have seen infinitely worse than this, but then again, so much better. If the filmmakers had either taken some of the atrocious plot twists out, we might have been treated to a tight, 90 minute thriller. Instead, we are felt a little cheated as big stars, and copious changes in plot seem to cover up the taste of this lukewarm thriller. 6/10 stars.
The acting ranges from mediocre to good, and features a lot of young faces like Taye Diggs and Giovanni Ribisi, and other familiar ones like Connie Nielsen, Harry Connick Jr., and the pilot from Wings (never did know his name...oh well). What this movie really has going for it is the atmosphere. The scenes of the squad in the hurricane (which, not to give anything away, is the plot of the movie all told in flashback) is very atmopheric, dreadful and appropriately mysterious. We are basically given a who-dunnit mystery told through the mouths of two survivors, each contradicting one another. I won't give anything else away, but the ending really did have me surprised, though pleasant, I felt a little cheated. Don't worry I'm about to tell you why.
What this movie suffers most from is from ambiguous information (that serves as a filler to the plot), poor editing and of course, one plot twist too many. Some movies like The Usual Suspects pulled off these twists with absolute panache...Basic, tries the same thing, but unfortunately, the results are sophomorish. Basic tries to up the ante with the plot twists (over and over and over and over again) but after about the 10th twist in the plot, it gets very tiresome. Sure, the story itself is pretty good, but the main fault was not in the script (if it was a bad script, why would so many talented actors commit to it?), but in the execution. McTiernan was the man back in the day, but with the massive flop, Rollerball, and now the slightly better than average Basic, he may be losing his steam. This movie tried so hard to make the viewer feel like it had outsmarted them...well, anybody can make a plot with an ending that is unexpected, but it takes a real master to tie it all together, and have it flow smoothly. Basic seems very choppy, and is one of the worst flowing movies I have seen in some time. It doesn't give us time to digest the next plot twist, b\c while we are sitting there thinking, A) trying to put faces to the names of the many characters in the flashbacks B) trying to piece together who is telling what and why, C) and are they lying or not, Basic throws another twist right at you. I will give the film credit, after sitting for about 30 minutes after it ended, I could honestly say that it did pull off a plot that had very few holes...but just barely. What I mean is, yes, point A does connect to point B, but it switches directions so much that once you get to point B (the end in this case), you forget how you got there. What this makes is a film that is not very memorable.
Despite the negative aspects, this film is a lot better than I thought it would be, and was an entertaining 2 hours or so. I have seen infinitely worse than this, but then again, so much better. If the filmmakers had either taken some of the atrocious plot twists out, we might have been treated to a tight, 90 minute thriller. Instead, we are felt a little cheated as big stars, and copious changes in plot seem to cover up the taste of this lukewarm thriller. 6/10 stars.