The Samuel L Jackson movie Roger Ebert hated: “You invest your trust and are betrayed”
Roger Ebert was a critic who loved a watertight plot and engaging characters. He was always more challenging to win over if your movie was mainly vibes and atmosphere, but if you gave him clockwork plotting that was still somehow surprising and characters whose motivations he could always track from A to B, your chances of a good review shot up.
However, Ebert couldn’t stand what he dubbed the “Jerk-Around Movie” – a picture that seemed to exist purely to pull the rug out from under the audience with little regard for whether or not any of it made sense. Samuel L Jackson made one of these movies in 2003. Ebert despised it.
When Jackson signed up for a twisty military thriller directed by his Die Hard with a Vengeance helmer John McTiernan, cinephiles could have been forgiven for getting excited. McTiernan wouldn’t be Jackson’s only reunion on the film, though – it would also re-team him with his Pulp Fiction co-star, John Travolta. This pedigree suggested audiences had an entertaining, action-packed ride to look forward to. Instead, they were served up a film that piled twists on top of twists until any semblance of reality evaporated into the ether.
“I embarked on Basic with optimism and goodwill,” Ebert wrote in his scathing one-star review. “As the plot unfolded, and unfolded, and unfolded, and unfolded, I leaned forward earnestly in my seat, trying to remember where we had been and what we had learned.” To his chagrin, though, despite giving it his best shot to meet the movie on its level, Ebert admitted, “With a sinking heart, I realised that my efforts were not going to be enough because this was not a film that could be understood.”
On its surface, Basic is a movie about Travolta’s DEA Agent Tom Hardy – no, not that one – investigating a botched training exercise that caused the deaths of several Army Ranger trainees and the instructor, Master Sergeant Nathan West, played by Jackson. The movie tells its story in Rashomon style, with different people giving various untrustworthy accounts of what truly happened.
Sadly, the thing that separated Basic from other movies that told their stories in willfully confusing ways or that lived and died on the strength of their twists was that its underlying reality didn’t add up in the end. Ebert called it a “Jerk-Around Movie,” writing, “It sets up a situation and then does a bait and switch. You never know which walnut the truth is under. You invest your trust and are betrayed.”
To his credit, Ebert revealed that he wouldn’t be opposed to these kinds of movies if they were executed well. He cited Memento as a great example of a good version of a “Jerk-Around Movie” and even gave some props to a beloved crime classic that he famously disliked but now seemed like a masterpiece next to Basic. “I felt The Usual Suspects was a long ride for a short day at the beach,” he admitted, “but at least as I traced back through it, I could see how it held together.”
Ultimately, Ebert felt Basic was all smoke and mirrors, with no substance underpinning it. Damningly, he even claimed it “exists with no respect for objective reality” and quipped, “By the end, I wanted to do cruel and vicious things to the screenplay.”
Amusingly, Ebert wasn’t the only person who hated Basic’s nonsensical approach to its own story. After all, its director confessed in 2014 that he knew it didn’t make a lick of sense. However, he claimed this was because, with only a week until shooting commenced, he was informed that he had to shoot the first draft of screenwriter James Vanderbilt’s screenplay.
“It was an absolute fucking nightmare,” McTiernan told Empire magazine. “I was sent a lawyer’s letter saying I couldn’t tell this to the studio, and would be sued if I tried to communicate it to them. I was able to squirrel away half a million dollars to do re-shoots, but the story still makes no sense. No sense at all.”
