Maj. John Murphy (Dacascos) is a U.S. Army Investigator, and his higher-ups have assigned him a new and highly dangerous mission: go undercover and see what's going on with Sgt. Gammon (Abell) and his small cadre of close personal followers. Gammon is suspected of drug-running, money-stealing, and perhaps even murder. Murphy is to track his every move, and report his findings to Lt. Kelly Andrews (Trickey). So Murphy shows up at THE BASE and, under the name of Cpl. Dalton, ingratiates himself into the group, and becomes one of the guys. But Gammon is very wily, and he may suspect something is afoot that could derail his evil operations. Murphy/Dalton is going to have to use every tactic he knows to defeat Gammon and his men - will he survive THE BASE? The Base has some good and worthwhile moments, and director Lester certainly knows how to stretch a low budget to get the maximum result from it. While the movie as a whole doesn't feel all that substantial, there are plenty of blow-ups, gun-shooting scenes, and some fights along the way to liven things up. There's even a tank/Jeep chase - how often do you see that? Plus, Dacascos is likable and clearly competent in the fight scenes. It makes sense that the fights are movie highlights when you see that the great James Lew was the fight coordinator (unfortunately, he doesn't appear in the film). Plus, this may be Tim Abell's best work to date. He really inhabits his character and is a solid baddie. And their hideout even has a pinball machine! Pretty sweet.By 1999, the classic era of DTV/action movies was over. Yet that didn't stop Lester from directing a sequel to The Base, The Base 2: Guilty As Charged (2000) the next year. Presumably, enough people rented The Base at their local video store to warrant this happening. It seems kind of hard to justify, but there it is. Even Dacascos was replaced by Antonio Sabato Jr. You don't even have to watch the two movies back-to-back - just within the same general timeframe - and you will notice many similarities, the most glaring of which is the scene where Dacascos/Sabato shows up at the base and gets into a brawl on the training ground. 'Sure, it depletes brain cells - let's do it again!' seems to be the overriding thought process there.So a lot of people get shot, stuff blows up, and people get beat up. Those are the highlights, and some stuff happens in between those scenes that you won't remember. The Base is far from bad, but it lacks that extra dimension to put it over the top into being solidly good all the way around.

Military Intelligence Officer, Major Murphy is assigned to go undercover on a military base to expose a drug smuggling ring which is run by a group of soldiers and a senior officer. Murphy goes undercover and attempts to infiltrate the group as they begin to move in on the existing dealers.The plot behind this is pretty weak - a group of soldiers are running round killing drug dealers and running drugs themselves, and they don't raise any major suspicions outside of the base and some military intelligence officers. Surely the police or someone would have picked up on this without having to start an internal covert op to get any evidence. Outside of that it's so-so but don't bring your brain.The plot doesn't allow that much action. Sure there's plenty of shootouts with drug dealers but Dacascos doesn't have too many opportunities to do his martial arts stuff. There's a fight when he first enters the base and there's the final fight at the end, but other than that it relies on the plot to drive it. Unfortunately even the shoot outs aren't great and the film doesn't totally deliver on the action.What is good is the two main performances and the sense of drama. Dacascos is good, but he's a little too pretty to be believable, and too much is made of how good he looks on a motorbike. Although he does give a good performance because he's got the looks and talent of someone who should be a bigger star. Tim Abeck is really good as the corrupt Sergeant Gammon, he brings a great sense of military meanness to the role and is believable psychotic. Unfortunately all the gangsters are played by Espanic stereotypes and the military base constantly has groups of soldiers running around in groups (until there's a gun battle then the base is strangely deserted!).Unusually for a Dacascos flick this is low on martial arts action and has good performances from the leads, but really this isn't any better than the usual straight to video stuff that Dacascos does.

The actions scenes were extradonairly good. The gun fights and tactics were also fairly accurate. Although I found some parts fake, i.e. when he drove up to the army base in a bomber jacket and blue jeans. I also noticed that in one scene, even though there was a tank chase, the people in the base just walked around like normal, even if the tank was feet away. The casting was fairly well done, and I got the sense that, for a low budget film, this movie was very good in military, civilian, and all other aspects.

At this movie Tim Abell really shows what his character really is - Psycho! (A very nice play) A good movie , about drug dillers and a lot of military action against them, solo action , four/five man against a hole drug dillers. A little non-realistic, but over and all a nice , action pack film! See it if you like military movies.