Basic (2003) Front Cover Actor John Travolta Agent Hardy Connie Nielsen Lt. Julia Osborne Movie Details Director John McTiernan Studio Columbia Pictures Language English Audience Rating R Running Time 98 mins Country USA Color Color Plot The disappearance of a military leader and the death of four of his men leads two investigators to wade through a morass of deceptions and half-truths in search of the facts in this thriller. Sgt. Nathan West ( Samuel L. Jackson ) is the leader of an elite team of U.S. Army Special Forces operatives known as the Army Rangers; West is known as a highly effective officer, but one with a short temper and aggressive attitude who is not well liked by his soldiers. During a seemingly routine training exercise in Panama, a hurricane sweeps in, and four of West's six men are dead, while West himself seems to have vanished. Eager to get the facts behind what happened, Col. Bill Styles ( Tim Daly ) assigns Capt. Julia Osborne ( Connie Nielsen ) to investigate. However, Osborne is having a hard time getting the two survivors to talk, so Styles brings in Tom Hardy ( John Travolta ), a former Army Ranger who served under West and became a first-class interrogator; Hardy later became a DEA agent, but left law enforcement after allegations of corruption. Hardy interviews Dunbar ( Brian Van Holt ), who claims that the four soldiers had been murdered, and West was killed in retaliation. Kendall ( Giovanni Ribisi ), the other survivor (whose father is a powerful officer) has a very different story of how the five men turned up dead, and it's up to Hardy and Osborne to determine who is telling the truth — or if anyone is saying exactly what happened. Basic marked the first time John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson appeared in the same film together since their breakthrough roles in Pulp Fiction . — Mark Deming Personal Details Seen It Yes Index 363 In Collection Yes Product Details Format DVD Region Region 1 Release Date 2003 Nr of Disks/Tapes 1