50
Philadelphia Inquirer by Carrie Rickey
Basically, it's a muddle.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
38
New York Daily News by Jack Mathews
Travolta is the least of the film's problems. With a script by James Vanderbilt, whose first credit was for a movie about the tooth fairy ("Darkness Falls"), and directed by John McTiernan, last seen struggling with "Rollerball," Basic is a fundamental failure.
38
Falls flat on two fronts: It's neither deep and interesting enough to be a brainteaser nor sufficiently thrilling to count as a mindless diversion.
58
Portland Oregonian by Kim Morgan
Basic essentially is a fun movie, surprise ending and all. To take it too seriously is to miss the point. Travolta is charming, his performance recapturing the old charisma.
38
Charlotte Observer by Lawrence Toppman
When the film stumbles to its last and silliest conclusion, you realize much of the plot line was unnecessary -- or couldn't have happened at all!
40
TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh
As the mismatched interrogators, Travolta and Nielson seem to be in two different and incompatible movies.
50
San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle
Just not worth revisiting, unless one wants to tie one's brain into a knot for no discernible reward.
50
The tepid result is like "Courage Under Fire" without the compelling Meg Ryan angle, or Travolta's 1999 "The General's Daughter" without the sexual squalor. It all feels a little moldy.
0
Dallas Observer by Robert Wilonsky
Basic really brings to mind a Travolta film from 2000, "Battlefield Earth," in that it's so astonishingly awful it becomes a sort of kinky pleasure; just when you think Travolta has fallen to the bottom of the barrel, he pulls out a shovel and dons his miner's helmet to see what lies beneath.
25
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
With style and energy from the actors, with every sign of self-confidence from the director, with pictures that were in focus and dialogue that you could hear, the movie descended into a morass of narrative quicksand. By the end, I wanted to do cruel and vicious things to the screenplay.