FEARSOME drill instructor Sergeant Nathan West (Samuel L Jackson) leads a platoon of six soldiers on a military training exercise in Panama.

Only two cadets, Dunbar (Brian Van Holt) and Kendall (Giovanni Ribisi) return alive; the remainder are presumed missing and never found, including Sergeant West.

Base commander Colonel Bill Styles employs Lieutenant Julia Osborne (Connie Nielsen) to investigate the case, but she is soon looking over her shoulder when bullish ex-army ranger turned DEA agent Tom Hardy (John Travolta) turns up asking difficult questions.

Despite their initial differences, Tom and Julia must work together to sort the lies and subterfuge from the truth and understand the chain of events leading to the disappearance.

Screenwriter James Vanderbilt flings Rashomon, The Usual Suspects, A Few Good Men and Courage Under Fire in the narrative blender, concocting an elaborate flashback structure in which the truth becomes ever more muddied by conflicting accounts of the training exercise.

What begins as a perplexing and intriguing game of whodunnit soon descends into farce as Vanderbilt contrives twists for the sake of it.

If you swallow the final reel surprise - I choked on it in disbelief - then first hour or so of interrogations makes no sense.

Travolta proudly flaunts his newly toned physique in the gratuitous opening shower scene then switches to acting auto-pilot, plying his trademark grin and furrowed brow.

There's a pleasing friction with Nielsen's by-the-book rival investigator but any embers of sexual tension are quickly extinguished by the rain which drenches every frame of the film.

If anyone says they guessed the ending, tell them they're fibbing. And then compel them to explain how the twists fit together. If you can be bothered.

Rating: 4/10