John Travolta, Connie Nielsen, Samuel L. Jackson

Tom Hardy, an ex-Army Ranger turned DEA agent, is drawn into an ever-widening mystery surrounding the disappearance of the feared and often hated Sgt. Nathan West, as well as several of his elite Spec...( read more  read more... )ial Forces trainees on what appears, at first, to have been a routine training exercise during a hurricane in the jungles of Panama. Only two survivors are found, Dunbar, and a badly wounded Kendall, the son of a high-profile Joint Chiefs of Staff official. Neither is willing to cooperate with Capt. Julia Osborne's investigation. So base commander Col. Bill Styles calls in ex-Ranger Hardy, an old friend and a persuasive interrogator. Osborne disapproves of Hardy who is on leave from the D.E.A. after having come under suspicion of accepting bribes from local drug traffickers. She is also uneasy when she learns that Hardy once trained under West and hates him almost as passionately as his current recruits. With time running out, Hardy and Osborne call a temporary, if uneasy, truce. Hardy cajoles a confession out of Dunbar, who claims that Sgt. West and the missing Rangers have been murdered and their bodies blown away by the hurricane. When they later interview Kendall, he confirms that the other Rangers and West are dead. But, in almost every other way, his story contradicts Dunbar's. What happened to West and his Ranger team? And what were they really doing out there in the jungle? As each layer reveals more lies and greater deceptions, Hardy and Osborne inch towards the horrible truth about the fate of the missing Rangers

Flixster Users

69% liked it

51,140 ratings

Critics

21% liked it

138 critics

R, 99 min.

Directed by: John McTiernan

Release Date: March 28, 2003

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DVD Release Date: July 8, 2003

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Stats: 1,820 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (1,820)


  • September 30, 2009
    After dishing out twist after twist, many of which are predictable, this film saves the best till last! Very engrossing and unpredictable (as it turns out), this is a top thriller!
  • July 11, 2009
    An intense and hard-boiled thriller. An edge of your seat ride with suspense and surprises that you will never see coming. You'll be guessing right till the very end. A gripping, electrifying, sensational, pulse-pounding and action-packed mystery. John Travolta gives an awsome a...( read more)nd explosive performance.
  • March 6, 2008
    basic
  • September 24, 2007
    sucked.
  • August 30, 2007
    Get it straight...
  • November 11, 2009
    Good thriller, but forgettable.
  • November 3, 2009
    i like twisty turvy who done its
  • October 26, 2009
    Bacana, um envolvente suspense.
  • October 22, 2009
    Kinda hard to follow but very good
  • October 15, 2009
    a bit more than your average Gi Joe movie

Critic Reviews


April 10, 2003
Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

Made up of remnants from other, better films. full review

March 28, 2003
Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

The plot twists, reversals, false accounts, unreliable narrators and conflicting testimonies that make up the story of Basic are just not worth revisiting, unless one wants to tie one's brain into a k... full review

March 28, 2003
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

By the end, I wanted to do cruel and vicious things to the screenplay. full review

March 28, 2003
Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com

The latest example of a thriller in which the beginning and the end make at least a tiny bit of sense, but the connecting stuff in between is just an inscrutable muddle of dumb twists, red herrings an... full review

View more Basic reviews at RottenTomatoes.com

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Basic Trivia


  • name the actress with the missing letters: Ca_ino T_e Muse Glori_ Sphe_e Catw_man A_tz _cissors _otal Recall Ab_ve the law Basic I_stinct Last Action H_ro  Answer »
  • Which actor has starred in all of the following:- - Saturday Night Fever - Get Shorty - The Thin Red Line - Swordfish - Basic  Answer »
  • One tagline for this film stated, "Heroes. Giants. Villains. Wizards. True love. Not just your basic, average, everyday, ordinary, run-of-the-mill fairy tale."  Answer »
  • Which of these films won the Razzie for Worst Picture of 2006?  Answer »

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