journal features

movie review - Basic

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2003.08.10

I'd heard that this was an American take on the Akira Kurosawa flick "Rashomon". I rather liked Rashomon, and thought, "They might have pulled it off despite the dreadful trailers..."

Wrong. So wrong.

I'm a reasonably bright person, and I've rarely come away with a movie thinking 'What the hell?' And when I have, the answers have usually sunk in during the next few hours, or during conversation with friends. A case of the former was "Jakob's Ladder", in which my brother and I worked out - as we crossed the cinema's parking lot - that the whole thing was the fevered imagining of a dying soldier in Vietnam. An example of the latter was "The Ninth Gate", into which I simply read too much to catch the relatively straightforward ending.

Anyway, it's been 12 hours since I saw "Basic", and my estimation of the film continues to slide. For while this movie was fairly well executed, and certainly leads a merry chase in a strange plot involving drug trafficking in Panama's (now defunct?) 'Canal Zone', it has a crucial failing. For a movie that's all about plot, the plot of this movie simply can't be pieced together. And by that, I don't mean to say, "In my estimation there are problems with obscure elements of the plot". I mean, there are basic flaws that start to become apparent at about the 1/3 mark, and become more and more problematic until the final threads holding the seams together get sliced open in the final, unnecessary denouement.

And still, I give it marks for being an entertaining attempt, and certainly a decent change from the usual pacing of such flicks. Also for the very un-American characterization that happens in fits and starts throughout.

Not recommended.

rand()m quote

One day you will take a fork in the road, and you're going to have to make a decision about which direction you want to go. If you go one way, you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and get good assignments. Or you can go the other way and you can do something [...] for yourself. If you decide to do something, you may not get promoted and get good assignments and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors. But you won't have to compromise yourself. To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That's when you have to make a decision. To be or to do.

—John Boyd, US Air Force