Starship Troopers

Director Paul Verhoeven is probably best-known for Robocop. Like Robocop, Starship Troopers is a deft mix of satire and futuristic violence, low on big-name actors but high on special effects and style. Interspersed with retro-styled propaganda, Starship Troopers tells the story of five hometown youths who enlist to fight in an interplanetary war with the aptly nicknamed alien race, 'The Bugs'. The film chronicles the start of full-scale war to the turning of the tide, intertwining each character's story (each one showing a different aspect of the war) and the development of their personalities as affected by the horrors they find themselves facing.

It's not as dark and depressing as it sounds. The film has a very wry, satirical feel to it (highlighted by the cheesy propaganda), and whilst it's extremely violent (and even quite gory in parts) it offsets this with high adventure and kitschy stereotyped characters, much like the old 'join up now!' war films of the early 1940s (an era further alluded to by images of ships cruising in space like naval battle cruisers) . There's a disturbing undercurrent in the presentation of Earth's future culture/mindset - an almost fascist/Nazi-styled version of America. In light of recent events it even seems to be a fairly logical extension of where the U.S. has been heading for the last decade. The attitudes of the characters (and Earth) to the war with the Bugs might have seemed frighteninginly out-of-step and backwards to our 'enlightened' learnings, if only for the fact that it seems so plausible after 9/11.

So, if you like your films full of fast-paced action and special effects, or if you like science-fiction with a theme relevant to today, then this is for you. It's a glossy, tongue-in-cheek, balls-out shoot 'em up. The only kind if you ask me.

HIGHLIGHTS: My favourite character would've had to have been Carl Jenkins, as played by Neil Patrick Harris. It's a pity he wasn't in it more, but had a cool, gestapo-ish role.