Travolta greases his career

OK, I just saw “Basic,” the movie that stars John Travolta as a latter-day Tony Manero packing on a few extra pounds, and I think I understand it. See, Travolta is a DEA agent who is brought in to investigate the murder of a group of Army Rangers during training exercises in Panama. Connie Nielsen is an army officer with a bad accent who resents having to assist him.

Giovanni Ribisi plays a bed-bound Ranger with a jerk for a father who gets carried from the kill zone by a friend whom he immediately rats out. Seems his friend, the one played by an actor with a bad haircut, is part of a drug ring. Or… wait. Maybe it’s bed-boy. Could it Nielsen? Or her accent?

Anyway, the mystery involves Samuel L. Jackson and a hurricane . Or is that the force of Jackson’s verbosity? It could be the rush of air caused by Timothy Daly’s plummeting career. And Taye Diggs comes in somewhere, which proves that even “Chicago” credits can’t save you from bad role choices.

So Travolta fumes and fusses, plays the good cop to Nielsen’s bad cop (did I say that she sports a bad accent?) and generally hams things up more than a Tekoa pig farmer. He grabs certain of his body parts, smokes several cigarettes (and doesn’t die), makes a pass at Nielsen, nearly decapitates bad-haircut-boy with an airplane propeller and ends up drinking Panamanian beer while eating frijoles with people only Haley Joel Osment could see.

So maybe I don’t understand. Who can blame me? The script is no help. It’s as if it were written in a fever. Maybe a … Saturday night fever ?