Basically bad and sorry attempt at a thriller.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Sep 30, 2010

Director John McTiernan does a swell job with James Vanderbilt's sneaky script in keeping us guessing.

| Mar 31, 2010

| Original Score: 1/5 | Dec 19, 2003

Granted, it's not Rollerball, and that in itself could be considered a small blessing. Unfortunately, it's only a small one, but I guess I shouldn't be too picky.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 19, 2003

Fumbling the setup, the Die Hard helmer quickly loses his grip on the material, turning Basic into little more than a mechanical exercise in plotting.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 3, 2003

You can fall asleep in the first reel, wake up at the end, and know as much as anyone else.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Apr 22, 2003

The meat of the picture -- the contradictory flashback sequences -- are staged so haphazardly that the audience has no incentive to pay close attention.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 20, 2003

Made up of remnants from other, better films.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 10, 2003

Nothing is as it appears, except the fact that nothing is as it appears.

| Apr 1, 2003

[Basic] had a great sense of itself and it had a lot of fun taking us from one corner to the next and then spinning us around until we got dizzy and didn't know where we were. I like that.

Full Review | Mar 31, 2003

It begins in a muddle and ends in confusion.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Mar 30, 2003

There's some magic on display worthy of the great Houdini--in scene after scene, logic and reason vanish before our very eyes with a well-timed poof!

| Mar 28, 2003

Travolta is a vital presence that constantly holds our attention, even when the script is threatening to lose it.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 28, 2003

There are so many shifts, so many 'Gotcha!' moments, so many characters who are 'not what they appear to be' that, by the final twist, you've stopped caring.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Mar 28, 2003

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 knot for no discernible reward.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 28, 2003

Artificial, manufactured and devoid of credibility.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 28, 2003

Basic is too busy changing rules and strutting its cleverness.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Mar 28, 2003

John Travolta is having fun -- a lot of it -- and that may be all the reason you need to wedge Basic into your post-Oscars film schedule.

| Mar 28, 2003

It's neither deep and interesting enough to be a brainteaser nor sufficiently thrilling to count as a mindless diversion.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Mar 28, 2003

The movie is just too busy to be suspenseful.

| Mar 28, 2003