John McTiernan is arguably one of the greatest action directors who’s ever lived, with prime classics like Predator (1987), Die Hard (1988), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995) and The Thomas Crown Affair (1999) standing out among lesser-but-still-impressive titles like Medicine Man (1992), Last Action Hero (1993), and The 13th Warrior (1999). For roughly fifteen years, the man forged out one helluva filmography, and was largely a huge success at the box office, sometimes amazingly so (looking at YOU, Predator and Die Hard!).
However, around the turn of the century, something changed, and his output became somewhat…lesser. It also didn’t help when he made the dumbass mistake of lying to the FBI about his involvement in a wire-tapping scheme (which he was guilty of, let’s be clear) against a film producer associate around the same time, revolving around his ill-fated production of the remake of 1975’s Rollerball, in 2002. That one went down in flames (I hear it’s amazingly, almost shockingly, bad and one day, I will catch up with it) and with it began the effective downfall of one of Hollywood’s most reliable and exciting action directors who could also tell a compelling story.
The smoke from the disaster that was Rollerball hadn’t even cleared before McTiernan somehow landed on THIS one…and this is where an incredibly lucrative directing career dies, badly, as the one-two strike of back-to-back failures coupled with his conviction and federal prison time brought the man’s largely coveted Big Screen output grinding to an unceremonious halt…as one might expect.
And as of this writing, and despite McTiernan having long ago completed his time behind bars and paid his dues back to Society, he has yet to return to the movie-making fold, despite the odd rumour that he may…someday, if the project is right.
Well, ‘someday’ better hurry the fuck up…as he is currently holding at 75 years old and none of us live forever.
Prior to this Revisit, I only ever caught Basic one time, almost immediately upon it’s initial Home Media release, and I recall being less than thrilled about what I’d seen, and shocked that what I HAD seen faded from memory as quickly as it did, as there are key scenes from other McTiernan films that live rent-free in my skull and have ever since my first viewings of amazing titles like Predator, Die Hard, and The Hunt for Red October (among others). And yet, with THIS title, nothing of any real note got stuck in the ole grey matter.
Fast forward a couple decades and, for reasons I don’t immediately recall, I was reminded that this flick is out there. In the past, I’ve gone back and rewatched titles from Days Gone By and occasionally, I get surprised by my own secondary reaction, whether the movie in question turns out better than I remember or, as is the case here, I’m reminded why my brain matter opted to blank this one from the memory banks.
That being said, and because curiosity does sometimes win out, I began scouring my local thrift stores for a copy for a Revisit, as I’d be damned if I was going to be shelling out my hard-earned cash for a brand-new something that I suspect / know to be of questionable quality.
And a few weeks after my search began…there it was, nestled in among the other DVD discards at my favourite Value Village location for a whopping $5. Yoink!
Taking place in contemporary Panama, Basic opens with last remnants of a missing US military squad being discovered in the jungle, seemingly killing each other in the midst of hurricane-like conditions. As the two survivors are brought in, investigating officer for the military ‘Capt. Julia Osborne’ (Connie Nielsen) finds herself stone-walled by both, with one stating he would only speak to a fellow Ranger. In comes DEA agent and former Ranger ‘Tom Hardy’ (John Travolta), a quipy drunk and creepy flirt who is supposed to somehow get the truth out through his radical, out-of-the-box ways. In the end, the emerging stories don’t match up, though both centre on the alleged fragging of a controversial commanding officer named ‘West’ (Samuel L. Jackson). And from there, wannabe-twisty turny intrigue ensues, right down to the highly unlikely and unearned ‘big twist reveal’ at the climax and blah blah blah.
But…prior to having rewatched it, I was genuinely curious and a teeny bit hopeful that it would turn out better than I remembered. Shame on me.
So, within hours of having found this little ‘gem’ nestled among the rest of the discarded physical media, it was slipping into the player and there I sat, pen and pad poised and ready to go.
PLAY
Scribbles happened…
-Fake weather. Cheap. Now, this was almost the only thing that I remembered from that first viewing literally decades ago (holy shit!) and that was the horrid-looking super-imposed rain effects that were used constantly, especially in helicopter shots. For what McTiernan has pulled off practically in his previous masterpieces, this came across as both straight up lazy and cheap…and it looked like both, to the point of being distracting. What ended up onscreen was unbecoming of the man in the director’s chair.
-Dialogue immediately awful. Delivery and simple word choices. Another glaring fallacy shows itself right away…and that’s the high-school level characterizations and dialogue, complimented by either weird stilted deliveries or cartoonishly over-the-top performances, from highly accomplished actors, no less.
-Pure, on-the-nose exposition at every turn, in the worst way. It’s pretty rampant.
-Starting to remember why I forgot this one. It did not take long to fall onto this conclusion.
-Great actors playing non-characters with Amateur-Hour dialogue. Whoop!…there it is! Again.
-Travolta has got to be gay. His ‘tough guy’ act is oddly effeminate. Just own it! It would add so much more credence to the weirdly fruity way he tries to come off as tough or edgy in many of his roles and this is not different. This is NOT a slight or a slur, as I openly appreciate and celebrate ANY individual who has the courage to ‘come out’ and be who they TRULY are. Just too bad that the pressures of Hollywood, Scientology, and his own ego haven’t allowed Travolta to accept who / what he is and to embrace it, as those with the courage deserve to.
–Everyone’s a caricature. That. Right there.
-Why Moby? Free? When Moby released his 5th album, 1999’s excellent Play, he made the surprising move of offering up licensing agreements for free, meaning films and TV could include tracks without owing Moby any cash. What a guy, that Moby. Being that the album was massively successful, there was a period where Moby tracks were turning up everywhere, in everything…at times feeling like, just cuz they could. THIS was one of THOSE, where a track that I readily know called Natural Blues (this CD is frequently lumped into my always different at-work playlist…physical media, baby!), was seemingly tossed into a scene it had no reason to be included in.
-Rain effects suck. More embarrassing super-imposed rain. So shitty looking.
-Almost ALL interactions feel forced and unnatural. So odd for McTiernan. About sums that one up.
-Who approved this script?! Awful. Like a 12 year old wrote it. No subtlety. Need I say more?
-A joint?! WTF?! Military + DEA? In keeping with the last scribble, we get an out-of-the-blue scene of Travolta and Nielsen hot-boxing a military Humvee, after the whole flick up to that point has set her up as this by-the-book wannabe hard-ass. So dumb.
-Connie Nielsen’s accent is all over the place. Connie Nielsen is not what I would call a great actor. She’s done…fine…in many of the other roles I’ve seen her in, but here the shallow depths of her talent were revealed, which is a slight on both her AND McTiernan, as it’s his job to coax the proper performances out of his talent. Left to her own devices…Nielsen stumbles. Good thing she’s married to the troll-looking, all-forehead drummer from Metallica, Lars Ulrich.
-Nielsen vs Travolta fight scene? Why? Completely pointless…as if to simply inject another action ‘beat’ after they realized how fucking dull this movie was becoming in post.
-Throws gun into prop to demonstrate!?! While threatening a prisoner with brutal murder in front of uniformed witnesses?! OK then. They actually have Travolta, while roughly dragging a suspect around an idling plane, pause before the spinning prop to threaten the dude with a ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark Nazi mechanic splatter death’, first off taking his Beretta 9mm and lobbing it…into the fucking planes propeller!
Holy shit!
First off, that’s a couple pounds of metal and plastic striking the high-speed blades of an airplane…an event that my non-aircraft mechanic mind suspects could potentially do to…oh, I don’t know…maybe damage to the blades, the engine timing, the rest of the damn fuselage and wings from flying pistol pieces, bullets included? Travolta’s character is hilariously written…which carries straight over to the screen, this moronic sequence being a prime example.
-At least, the gunfire sounds cool. At least.
-A surprise 4th Act twist? *groan*
-Reminds me of both The Game and The Usual Suspects, just not in a good way. If you know…you know. No *SPOILERS* for this movie, that I’m NOT recommending…*SPOILER*
-Ugh! Does that adequately sum it up?
And basically…that was Basic.
When it’s all said and done, my Revisit of Basic did not yield the results that I was hoping for, as I went in eager to discover that my initial impression from all those years ago was somehow faulty, and that I’d simply somehow missed the brilliance that McTiernan had managed to secrete into what would amount to his last feature film before everything kinda went to shit for him.
But alas, I was wrong and my first impression was the lasting impression for a reason, and that reason is this – Basic sucks.
Given just how much of McTiernan’s filmography is absolutely top-tier filmmaking, it’s almost shocking just how far down the ladder the quality of this title is, from the wannabe-clever, non-linear story structure right up to the persistent shitty effects used to depict the omnipresent (and narratively-needless) hurricane conditions the amateurish narrative exists within.
To be honest, there is really nothing, a couple key camera movements and compositions aside, to suggest that a master of his class like John McTiernan had anything to do with this one. Which I again find strange.
Of course, all major directors have had their flops along the way, but this one is so far in the hole that my sense of disappointment on this second-ever viewing was shockingly tangible, firing up the internal debate on whether or not McTiernan even still has it, especially at his now-advanced age, and if jumping behind the camera again would be the wisest of ideas, should the rumours of his pursuit of a worth-while, late-in-the-game project prove to be true. While definitely curious about the possibilities, the sensible side of me thinks it may be best for the man to cut his losses and hang onto the legacy provided by his earlier, far more awesome films from the 80’s and 90’s.
And you should too.
Stick with McTiernan’s established classics and feel free to skip straight past Basic, should you one day find it in your way.
