Basic (2003)

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General		Extras
Category	Thriller	Main Menu Audio & Animation Audio Commentary-Director (John McTiernan) Featurette-Director's Design Featurette-A Writer's Perspective Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	2003
Running Time	94:08
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (68:03)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	John McTiernan
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	John Travolta Samuel L. Jackson Connie Nielsen Timothy Daly Giovanni Ribisi Brian Van Holt Taye Diggs Dash Mihok
Case	?
RPI	$39.95	Music	Klaus Badelt

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.40:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.40:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    John Travolta is my wife's favourite heart-throb and Samuel L. Jackson is one of my favourite actors. What do you get when you put them together in a film? Well, if you are lucky, you can get a masterpiece of cinema like Pulp Fiction. If not, you can get an overly convoluted and confusing film like Basic.

    John McTiernan (Die Hard, Predator) directs a movie which is an uneasy marriage between a whodunit and an action film. The story begins as a group of elite Army Rangers are choppered through a hurricane in Panama. The soldiers are being split into teams of two, to perform a survival exercise in the dense jungle and torrential rain. Leading the exercise is one Sergeant Nathan West (Jackson), a stereotypically sadistic drill sergeant who is driving these specialist forces to beyond their breaking point.

    During the course of the short exercise West is killed, several soldiers go MIA (presumed dead), one is arrested by the military authorities and one is hospitalised. Captain Osborne (Connie Nielsen) is the Provost Marshall charged with unravelling the truth behind the bloody events of that night, but she is having a difficult time getting the two recovered Rangers to talk. Her commanding officer Colonel Bill Styles (Timothy Daly) decides to call in some help from his old Ranger colleagues, in the form of a currently disgraced DEA officer named Tom Hardy (John Travolta). Hardy and Osborne slowly attempt to untangle a web of lies, as it becomes apparent that there was more going on in that jungle than a simple military training exercise.

    After a promising set-up, I settled down to watch what I thought would be a clever military murder mystery. With such a great cast, an experienced director of action movies and a hugely atmospheric backdrop - both audio and visual - what could possibly go wrong? Well...the screenplay could. Very little time is spent introducing the Rangers, and this causes confusion once the accusations start flying - I didn't really know the names of each of the characters yet, and found it hard to follow who was supposed to have done what to whom. The plot rapidly disintegrates into a frenzied bait and switch game, with more twists than a fifty foot strand of DNA. Travolta is close to his best, as the wisecracking renegade charmer with a glint in his eye and a swagger in his walk. Jackson was born to play the role of the aggressive drill sergeant and Nielsen provides a reasonable sidekick for Travolta. The action scenes are well visualised and the film does build up some great expectations before it self-destructs in a mass of red-herrings, plot holes and confusing misdirection. All the surround effects and superstar actors in the world cannot save a plot which is this contrived.

    Basic is anything but. Its major flaw lies in its overly contorted plot. McTiernan seems to be trying to enter the Guinness Book of Records by trying to fit as many plot twists as possible into a single film, and it ultimately leaves the viewer confused and unsatisfied. The film moves very fast, has a great cast and some good action special effects - but unfortunately it moved just too quickly for this reviewer, and I found myself getting left further and further behind. Nice idea, just a little too clever for its own good. According to the tagline for this movie, "Deception is their most dangerous weapon" - sadly it is a very blunt weapon, wielded without due care and attention. Worth a rental for fans of the stars.

Video

    The video quality of this transfer is very good, and is without significant flaws.

    The feature is presented 16x9 enhanced at 2.40:1, which is the original theatrical aspect ratio. The transfer is very clean and well rendered throughout, as might be expected for such a very recent release. There is no evidence of film grain and while there are some occasionally soft shots and tiny lapses in focus during the first reel, overall this is a satisfying visual experience.

    The dark scenes show rock-solid blacks with no evidence of low level noise. Shadow detail is extremely good throughout. Due to the almost constant night scenes, the colour palette is somewhat restricted to a range of blues, but where the opportunity crops up other colours are very well rendered (for example, the costumes in the street parade around 83:00). There is no colour bleeding evident. Skin tones look natural throughout the movie.

    I witnessed no major MPEG artefacts in this video transfer. Despite the frequently very sharp image, edge enhancement was not noticable and aliasing was never an issue. Telecine wobble is generally absent, with only a minor occurrence in the opening couple of titles.

    There are no significant film artefacts in what is a spotless transfer (as would be expected for a film barely out of the cinemas).

     Somewhat surprisingly, there are no subtitles available.

    The disc is RSDL formatted with the layer change occurring at 68:03, in the middle of a scene. The layer change is fairly brief but is noticeable.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The audio transfer has some truly excellent surround effects, and some full-on low frequency effects, but is flawed by the lack of attention paid to the dialogue.

    Even before the feature starts, you will have your socks blown off by the most stunning studio intro I have ever witnessed. The crashing tidal wave of the Intermedia title has great visual impact and breathtakingly enveloping audio - a highlight in itself! The main feature audio track too, is a very aggressive Dolby Digital 5.1 track encoded at 448 kbps. The lesser Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack encoded at 224 kbps is also highly serviceable for those without surround capability, although I only sampled this track.

    The sound is spotlessly clean throughout, with no hiss, clicks or pops at all. Dialogue however is mixed at too low a level relative to the thunderstorm effects and is occasionally difficult to make out. I am certain that much of this is a deliberate attempt to reinforce the raw power of the hurricane which rages for much of the film, but this film demands careful listening due to the complexity of the storyline, and I found myself straining to make out some of the dialogue, which can be tiresome. In scenes where the storm is less evident (mainly the interrogations) the dialogue is fine with natural-sounding voices and a much more subdued ambience. Audio sync was generally spot-on, with only two minor instances where the track briefly lost sync at 64:10, just as Nielsen returns to speak to Ribisi in his hospital bed and during Harry Connick Jr's singing at 68:40.

    The original musical score credited to Klaus Badelt (Ned Kelly, K-19: The Widowmaker) is suitably militaristic in nature and suits the mood of the film very well. There is no doubt however, that the main game in this audio transfer is the highly evocative hurricane effects.

    The front speakers provide extremely good separation with split effects covering the front of the soundstage. The surround speakers are never silent, and are used to tremendous effect in creating a swirling hurricane and the associated torrential rain admirably. A great example of rear soundstage ambience can be heard at 7:08 with the street noises behind Travolta's telephone conversation. There are some nice instances of front to rear panning and spot sound effects in the rear channels. Overall this is a fully enveloping, highly aggressive soundtrack.

    The subwoofer is used frequently to add a satisfying bottom end to the thunderstorm. It also gets a fair old workout by vigorously supporting the chopper sounds, gunshots and explosions in the film. A very satisfying bass experience which reminds you of why you bought that subwoofer in the first place.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    There are a couple of extras on the disc, and they are quite revealing about the reasons for the plot being so damned tortuous.

Menu

    The main menu is nicely designed and very functional. It presents video close-ups of the stars from the film accompanied by the soundtrack and various background walkie-talkie noises. The menu is presented 16x9 enhanced and allows the selection of playing the movie, choosing one of a paltry fourteen chapter stops, audio set-up, or access to the following special features:

Audio Commentary

    A very tedious commentary from McTiernan, which is a real chore to listen to. He speaks quietly and monotonously with very long pauses between comments - this is one of the most soporific commentary tracks I have listened to in a long time.

Director's Design Featurette

    Running for 21:37 and presented full-screen (1.33:1) with letterboxed inserts from the film, this is a mildly entertaining featurette if you can forgive some of the gratuitous back-slapping. It features the major members of the cast and crew, and most interestingly we learn that McTiernan and Travolta were responsible for having the screenplay changed to provide a "better" ending to the movie. Perhaps they should stick to directing and acting respectively, because they did the movie no favours by meddling with the plot.

A Writer's Perspective Featurette

    James Vanderbilt, the seemingly quite young writer of the screenplay, talks about the inspiration for the screenplay. Over the 16:37 running time, he reveals how he came up with the basic premise and researched the story. There are deleted scenes within this piece and Vanderbilt explains why they do not appear in the final work, and the unfortunate influence which McTiernan had on the storyline. Tom Clancy he isn't, but I think he shows some real promise and I look forward to seeing how his skills develop over coming features. This fairly interesting featurette is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 with a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack encoded at 224 kbps.

Theatrical Trailer

    Presented letterboxed at 1.78:1 (and therefore not 16x9 enhanced) with a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack encoded at 224 kbps. Running for 1:51, the most striking feature here is that the colour balance is totally different from the released movie. The blue filtering applied to evoke a night-time feel to the finished movie has not been applied, and it provides an interesting comparison to the finished look of the film.

    The Region 1 release of Basic contains English and French Dolby Digital 5.1 audio tracks, along with subtitles in the same languages. The extras appear to be identical to the Region 4 release. Buy whichever is cheapest, unless you really want the subtitles.

    Basic is a flawed movie. It takes an interesting set-up and destroys it with endless "I'm smarter than you" plot twists that will leave your head spinning. The audio is great (except for some of the dialogue mixing) and the video quality is very good. What a shame to waste the talents of Travolta and Jackson with an endless bait and switch fest. I would strongly suggest a rental before a purchase is considered.

    The video quality is very good, but for best results I would recommend viewing in a darkened room.

    The audio transfer is very good, with a highly enveloping surround track and a serious subwoofer workout. The dialogue can be hard to make out during the thunderstorm scenes.

    The extras are adequate and mildly interesting - except for McTiernan's monotonous commentary.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall