Basic

When a U.S. Special Ops exercise in Panama ends in disaster with four dead under mysterious circumstances, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent (John Travolta) is called in to investigate, with the grudging assistance of an Army lieutenant (Connie Nielsen, fumbling vainly with a cornpone Southern accent). Writer James Vanderbilt’s last script was the execrable Darkness Falls, and this one, defying all odds, is even worse—a goulash of plot twists without any plot. Desperate to conceal the lack of a story, director John McTiernan uses the hurricane background—driving rain, flashing lightning, bellowing thunder and roaring winds—as smoke and mirrors, but the ploy backfires: The film is literally painful to look at and all but impossible to hear. Also wasted are Samuel L. Jackson, Taye Diggs, Giovanni Ribisi and others.