10 Movie Murders That Were Utterly Impossible To Solve

7. Basic

John McTiernan has not made a film since this 2003 stinker. The director of such hits as Die Hard and Predator has been barred from taking another trip behind the camera, which is either something to do with the quality of this outing, or the fact that he was arrested on some complicated conspiracy charges by the FBI. Maybe a mix of both... Anyway, the film follows a very familiar whodunit structure, albeit in the form of a war movie instead of your usual crime thriller: a team of Army Rangers engage in a training exercise using live ammunition, and a bunch of them wind up dead. John Travolta is a DEA interrogator brought in to get to the bottom of things. From there, each suspect tells his story, Rashomon-style. Travolta - and by extension, the audience - has to decide how to believe. It's a daring attempt at updating the Christie approach, even down to a variation on the "gathering the suspects in the drawing room and revealing the identity of the killer" thing at the end. Except, well, that was all a total fake out. A bait-and-switch. Basic acts like you can figure out the mystery, before revealing at the end that the soldiers were actually a black-ops anti-drug unit, which involves faking a bunch of deaths, killing off some bad 'uns covertly, and the reveal that Travolta was in on the whole thing. Insultingly stupid, especially when the audience thinks they were on the level.