Gun battles in the rainy Panamanian jungle bewilder the filmviewer in Basic, directed by John McTiernan. Who is fighting whom over what? Perhaps a second screening will be required to answer the puzzle over the plot, but lost is an excellent opportunity to present a contemporary version of the 1950 classic Rashomon. Instead, the ending is such a variation on U Turn (1977) that few in the audience will care what is true or false about all the corrupt, insincere, cover-your-ass characters. Anyway, something went wrong in the jungle. Ranger Sergeant Nathan West (played by Samuel L. Jackson), who commands his recruits in impossible weather, presumably dies along with some members of his squad, while the rest shoot at each other for no apparent reason. Accordingly, base commander Colonel Bill Styles (played by Tim Daly) assigns two persons the task of debriefing the surviving participants and then providing a coherent report on what happened. They are Tom Hardy (played by John Travolta), an alcoholic former Ranger and current Drug Enforcement Agency official in Panamá City, and Captain Julia Osborne (played by Connie Nielsen), head of the base’s military police. Flashbacks to the battle by the survivors further confuse the narrative, as those interrogated have differing versions of the events. Since there is plenty of money to be made in the drug trade, filmviewers may suspect that there is an obvious motive behind the mystery–greed. The only one who is left out of the cabal is Osborne, and she is neutralized at the end of the film. But so is the audience, which will feel duped when big stars are unable to shine in a cinematic black hole. MH