Product Description John Travolta is Tom Hardy, ex-Army Ranger-turned Drug Enforcement Agency agent, a hard man with a dark past. Hardy is drawn into a mystery as wild as the hurricane-ravaged jungles of Panama when he is ordered to investigate the disappearance of a legendary Special Forces instructor, Sgt. Nathan West (Samuel L. Jackson) and several of his elite team. What happened out there? Hardy intends to find out – at any price. Deception proves to be a dangerous weapon as Hardy unravels the truth with shocking consequences. From the director of Die Hard, Basic delivers all-action thrills with an all-star cast, including Connie Nielson (Gladiator), Giovanni Ribisi (Gone In Sixty Seconds) and Brian Van Holt (Windtalkers). From Amazon.co.uk Basic is a military mystery that offers multi-layered deception as its dramatic raison d'etre, but with plenty of machismo attitude as befitting a semi-effective thriller from Die Hard director John McTiernan. John Travolta stars as an ex-Army Ranger-turned-DEA agent, recruited by an Army investigator (Connie Nielsen) to solve the fratricide of a reviled Sergeant (Samuel L Jackson) who was allegedly killed while commanding a Special Forces training mission in the hurricane-swept rainforests of Panama. Two survivors (Giovanni Ribisi in a showboat role and Brian Van Holt) recall the ill-fated mission as the truth unfolds, Rashomon-style, in a series of repetitive flashbacks. Tricky enough to hold one's attention as it grows increasingly irrelevant, Basic is so enamoured of its bogus ingenuity that its ultimate twist is a letdown. A second viewing might prove rewarding, if only to confirm that it all holds together. -- Jeff Shannon