Subject: Review: Starship Troopers (1997)

From: [email-masked] (Alberto)
Date: 13 May 1998 02:55:17 GMT

"Starship Troopers"
(USA, 1997)

>From "Starship Troopers" I was expecting more or less a film
in the vein of "Robocop". That is, a SF movie which could both
deliver good wham-bang action (with that kind of excessive and
cartoonish carnage I occasionally enjoy) and a deeper and sharp
satire on a number of issues such as militarism, consumerism,
xenophobia, media power, economic force and so on. I still rate
"Robocop" as the best and the smartest SF movie of the 80s,
along with "Blade Runner" and closely followed by "Terminator"
and I was hoping Verhoeven would manage to do the trick again.

Nothing I read on the movie had given me reasons to expect a different
movie than that. But I'm sorry to admit the movie did not live up to
these expectations. It sure delivers on the level of popcorn fun, with
action sequences that were unlike anything I had seen before: the second
half of the movie, with the attacks of hordes of giant bugs to the fort
and the bloody duels between bugs and humans, went closer than anything
in achieving the powerful dynamism of the best superheroes comic
books... something movies always have had trouble in recapturing.
I can understand someone was taken aback by the massive gore
feast, but I don't blame Verhoeven for being coherent to his style.
It probably should have been up to Disney to market it as an adult
entertainment rather than the star-wars-like family show that one
would be led to expect from the trailers. But on this side -even if it
had annoying logic loopholes that you could not help but notice
(how about one of the characters -don't remember the name, she
was Casper Van Diem's love interest... you know, the pilot girl-
being pierced from one side to another by one of the giant bugs'
claws... then joining her friends in the fight and carrying heavy
weapons as if nothing had happened?)- I had fun.

On the other side, however, the movie seems to me much less
satisfying when it comes to the expected satirical edges. Although
I find it interesting that the movie plays as a Star Wars gone nasty
(the gore becoming a way to expose the hidden violence in the
George Lucas film, where entire planets were destroyed in a
clean and almost harmless-looking blast) I was expecting much
more than that. Verhoeven was brilliant in dressing up his actors
as nazis, as if he wanted us to root for them and yet be aware that
the humans' war is an imperialistic aggression (one of the journalists
in one of the hilarious TVnews footage mentions the fact the bugs'
aggressiveness was awakened by the earthlings' attack on their
planet). But the message was there only if you really looked for it
knowing what you can and should expect from that director.

The idea of being called "A Citizen" only if you had done your share
of military service is clever... although I have a feeling it comes from
Heinlein in the first place (but I haven't read the book yet, so I'm
just guessing). But it remains a suggestion and it is not developed in
any direction. It remains unclear what real Citizens have more than the
others... The Michael Ironside character -the pacifist teacher who
reappears halfway through the movie as an official in the army- is
at the very least underdeveloped and you get a feeling you're missing
valuable information there which could throw some light on why he
has so radically changed his mind.

Also underdeveloped is the only character that shows at least a hint
of depth beyond the two-dimensionality of the others... Dina Meier's
Dizzy is the only major character that you feel you'd be interested to
know more about. Also, Meier is the only face which does not make
her look like a close relative of Barbie and Ken... I would not be
surprised in seeing her coming up again with or without Verhoeven in
juicier roles... as it happened to one Sharon Stone before her...

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