Explosive
Summary
THE BASE movies are both solid action films, and Kino Lorber brings them both in solid high definition transfers.
The Base (1999) Plot: A military intelligence officer goes undercover at a base where he roots out a sergeant who is taking over the Los Angeles drug trade.
Review: After a botched investigation that has his whole team killed in the line of duty, Major John Murphy (Mark Dacascos) takes his next gig: Go undercover at an Army base where he joins the ranks under a hard-edged sergeant named Gammon (well cast Tim Abell), who is running his team after hours to silently and secretly eliminate drug traffickers going in and out of Mexico, and in the process taking over the drug trade in Los Angeles. Murphy’s got his work cut out for him: Gammon is an unhinged, but cunning bastard who doesn’t hesitate to cold bloodedly murder anyone who stands in his way – including traitors in his own ranks – and yet he trusts Murphy … until he doesn’t. Murphy only has a limited amount of time before his cover is blown, and his one lifeline to the agency that recruited him – a Lieutenant named Andrews (Paula Trickey) – is targeted by Gammon when he realizes Murphy is working against him. With an entire Army backing Gammon up, as well as a corrupt general, Murphy has to take a stand at the base and go to war.
Completely palatable as an action film and a solid vehicle for martial arts action star Dacascos, who is in virtually every scene of the film, The Base benefits greatly by sure-handed direction by Mark Lester, whose previous winning action films Commando and Showdown in Little Tokyo remain action classics. The pace and tension of the movie is tight with lots of nail-biting suspense, plentiful action, and an over-the-top finale that has a tank rolling through the base and blasting everything in sight.
The Base 2: Guilty as Charged (2000) Plot: An Army intelligence officer goes undercover at a base to root out an evil Lieutenant, who instructs his squad to hunt down soldiers who’ve been acquitted for crimes they were obviously guilty of.
Review: Too many soldiers who’ve stood trial at military tribunals have been acquitted due to technicalities or because their fathers were well connected and “bought off” their sons’ guilty verdicts, and a secret tribunal cabal within the military community have a method to punish soldiers their own special way: They unleash Lieutenant Strauss (James Remar) and his secret squad of commandos, who capture the guilty soldiers (such as a soldier who brutally raped a female cadet, but was found innocent) and take them to a nature preserve where they hunt them down and kill them. A military intelligence officer named Hawks (Antonio Sabato Jr.) goes undercover at the base where Strauss is thriving and loving his off-the-books murders, and he impresses him enough to be asked to join the squad. For a while, Hawks excels at impressing Strauss and the squad (and he even beds the one female member, who has her reasons for enjoying and approving of the murders of fellow soldiers), but when Hawks helps one of their captives escape the hunt, which results in the death of one of the squad members, suspicions arise and Strauss finds that there is a rat in their midst and that the death squad only has so much time left before it all comes crashing down.
The second and final entry in The Base franchise is a good enough rehash of the first one, and it’s obvious that it was written to continue the original character forward but had to be slightly rewritten to create a new protagonist. Either way, it’s completely solid and a worthy entry for fans of the first one. Director Mark Lester recycles the formula with a new star (who’s pretty good!), adds in a few stock footage scenes from the first (notice the strip club is the same, despite the base being different), but it’s all good. The film is full of action, riffs on “The Most Dangerous Game” to nice effect, and Remar makes a great villain (of course!).
Kino Lorber and Dark Force Entertainment bring these two films together in a single disc as a double feature, presenting both films in a satisfactory high definition transfer. There’s an audio commentary by Lester on the first film and an interview with Sabato Jr. for the second one.