STARSHIP TROOPERS (PG-13).
Director:Paul Verhoeven
Stars:Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer,
Denise Richards, Jake Busey, Neil
Patrick Harris, Clancy Brown, Seth
Gilliam, Patrick Muldoon, Michael
Ironside, Rue McClanahan, Marshall
Bell
Running Time:129 minutes.
Dutch born director Paul Verhoeven's career
reached something of a nadir with his controversial,
tacky, and critically maligned Showgirls. Thankfully,
his new film Starship Troopers is nowhere near as
bad, but neither does it reach the lofty heights of his
exciting and relentlessly paced 1990 sci-fi thriller
Total Recall, which scored Oscars for its stunning
special effects.
Based on Robert Heinlein's 1959 novel, Starship
Troopers is set in a vaguely disturbing totalitarian
state of the near future. Military service is a means by
which people gain citizenship, and fresh faced, eager
young students, straight out of high school, sign up to
do their compulsory service in this darker variation of
Kennedy's peace corps. One such recruit is Johnny
Rico (Casper Van Dien), driven more by lust for the
beautiful pilot Carmen (Denise Richards) than any
patriotic notions. But the idealism and youthful
innocence of these trainee soldiers is put to the
ultimate test when they are sent off to the far reaches
of the galaxy to do battle with marauding hordes of
vicious, rapacious bug creatures that threaten the
earth.
The script from Ed Neumeier (who also wrote
Robocop for Verhoeven) is horribly cliché-ridden,
and some the gung-ho dialogue is unintentionally
hilarious, provoking guffaws of disbelief from the
audience. It's difficult to know whether Verhoeven
deliberately had his tongue in cheek while making
Starship Troopers, or whether this uncertain mix of
humour and nasty-edged violence is a rare
miscalculation. The satiric undertone Verhoeven used
so effectively to counter the extreme violence of
Robocop is again replicated here through the use of
government infotainment news breaks and
propaganda messages. Think of those old propaganda
films from the 1940's, and replace Europe with far off
planets and the Nazis with killer bugs, and you begin
to get an idea of the bleak humour that drives this
film.
Verhoeven directs the material with undeniable
energy and gusto. There is a remorseless and
unpleasantly sadistic edge to the violence as the
malevolent bugs cut a relentless swath through the
inexperienced young troopers, littering the screen with
a bloody trail of dismembered corpses. One almost
expects to see a small counter in the corner of the
screen continually ticking over as the body count
steadily rises.
In both style and content, Starship Troopers
resembles a rather graphic comic strip. Van Dien
certainly resembles the typical strong-jawed, clean-cut
comic book hero of yesteryear. The mainly youthful
cast, primarily drawn from the world of glossy tv
soaps, approaches the material with an earnestness
that is peculiarly endearing. Only veteran Michael
Ironside seems attuned to the tone of the film,
delivering a wonderfully over the top and ironic
performance as Rasczak, the one armed teacher who
commands a unit of troopers during an invasion of the
bug infested planet of Klendathu.
The special effects from the same technical team
behind Robocop are superb, and the generous budget
has been well spent. The outer space sequences are
quite impressively staged, and the computer generated
bug creatures are spectacular. Ultimately though,
Starship Troopers is a sure sign of a director with too
much money and time on his hands and not enough
inspiration or invention.