Starship Troopers (1997)
By Laurence Mixson: venom8@hotmail.com
Starring Casper Van Dien, Patrick Muldoon, Dina Meyer, Jake Busey, and Neil Patrick Harris
*** out of ****
I've heard a lot of complaints about Starship Troopers in the 4 days since it's been open: "it's too violent!", or "the characters suck!" or "the action scenes are non-stop". Well, not to point out the obvious, folks, but THAT'S NOT THE FRIGGIN' POINT OF THE MOVIE! First of all, Starship Troopers IS the most violent main-stream movie I've ever seen, about 10 times the scale of Braveheart. Seriously. The director, Paul Verhoeven(Robocop, Total Recall) who's already known for his willingness to show graphic images, completely lets himself loose here. I want get into the gory details, but let me just say this: I truly believe that the reason there's so little profanity in this movie is so they could squeak by the MPAA with an R rating, instead of the dreaded NC-17. But that's beside the point. Basically, the movie, like most good sci-fi movies, is set in the future(did that make any sense?). The hero, Rico(Van Dien) just recently graduated from high school. He joins, both in an attempt to impress his girlfriend AND to gain citizenship(I'll explain later) the Federation Army. Back to that citizenship part: the earth, or even the universe, for all we know(that's one thing I like about this movie: it doesn't have a "dummy history" at the beginning that scrolls down and gives you a complete history of the movie. You kind of have to figure things out for youself) is comprised of the Federation(yeah, yeah I know it's a trek rip-off.) You can either be a civilian, without advanced priveliges like being able to give birth to children, or you can become a citizen by touring with the armed forces for a couple of years. Rico desires to become a citizen, mainly because of the influence of a high school teacher. Lucky for the plot of this movie, he joins just as the "Bug War" breaks out. "Bug War?", you ask. Let me explain: in a planet not too far from here, named Klandathu, there live various types of "bugs", albiet really big, really mean bugs, that keep launching meteors at earth. One hits, conviently killing Rico's parents, and earth, of course, declares war on the bugs. Here's where the fun begins: Rico slowly rises through the ranks, accompanied by his friends Diz(Meyer) and whoever Neil Patrick Harris plays. I can't remember the dude's name. He also slowly loses touch of his girlfriend, who's a pilot in the service, to a cocky pilot named, uh, something-or-other, played by Patrick Mulroon. The infantry, with Rico and Diz, lands on the bug planet. They fight the bugs, mainly the swords-for-limbs arachnids, with machine guns. These aren't really too effective on the bugs. Which brings me too a point: in the future, if they can launch handheld nukes from bazookas(which they do numerous times in this movie), then why can't they just drop a big nuke on the bug planet? Of course, the answer's too simple: that would eliminate the cool fight scenes. Which brings me to the fight scenes: technically speaking, they're huge accomplishments for Verhoeven and his team. The bugs are visually stunning(even if you can't tell where their faces are), and the blood and guts fly convincingly as well. Of course, if you're squeamish, you'll hate these scenes completely. Let's just say I have a very strong stomach concerning movie violence, and even I gulped a little when an arachinid bit a man in half and the bottom half flopped down on Rico. Eww. To wind things down(I think this is the longest review I've ever written), let me just say this about Starship Troopers: it's a witty, somewhat forgettable, high budget b-movie. The witty part comes from Verhoeven's very sick sense of humor indulged in these sort of "newsreel, propaganda pieces" the federation uses to recruit new members. These shorts, very remniscient of the 40's and 50's same-type thing, are hilaroius. Even if that "Would You Like to Know More?" thing gets annoying after a while(it doesn't always tell you more. Maybe I wanted to know more, dangit!) So what's the bottom line skinny on Starship Troopers: if you liked Robocop, Total Recall, or just action and sci-fi films in general, this is definitely the best film of that type this year(much better than The Fifth Element".) If you're a little squeamish, or pregnant, then stay away. Or if you're just stuck in the middle, trying to find an alternative to "Bean" or "The Devil's Advocate"(God knows, who isn't?) then check this one out, for sure!
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews