BASIC (2003). Maybe this film from John McTiernan is John Travolta's attempt to repeat the hip narrative twists of Pulp Fiction. Travolta plays Tom Hardy, a former Army Ranger and current sodden DEA agent who's asked to look into a seeming mutiny and multiple murder during a special-forces training mission led by mean Sergeant Nathan West (Samuel L. Jackson) in Panama. Reluctantly assisting him is Captain Julia Osborne (Connie Nielsen), the on-base investigator and the kind of stuck-up tough blonde who just melts when John Travolta acts like a pig. Was the guilty party Dunbar (Brian Van Holt), one of two apparent survivors who was found carrying the wounded Kendall (Giovanni Ribisi in a shameless gay stereotype)? Or was it Kendall, whose own explanation is pretty shaky? We get to see their stories of what really happened and several others as well, all contradictory and none very engrossing. Basic is less earnest than the equally negligible Courage Under Fire but more pretentious -- call it six endings in search of a movie. The only thing it has in common with Rashomon, that touchstone of narrative unreliability, is the incessant rain, which drowns out everything: dialogue, plot, plausibility, and purpose. (98m)

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