GazerRise Fantastic!

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Brennan Camacho Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

cinemajesty Movie Review: "Starship Troopers" (1997)Trademark director Paul Verhoeven delivers an exceptional Science-Fiction action movie that in retrospective has nothing lost even gained in motion picture entertainment factors in a noted 20th anniversary since release. The perfectly prepared 20-something cast plays up under Verhoeven's direction, creating a blueprint of a positive-thinking future generation even in extremest of situations, where female and male become unisex and equals in ever sense of free-loving and engaging sexuality, educational advancements, social status, psychological advantages and further career opportunities.The pace of the two hour 100 Million Dollar production, financed and distributed by TriStar and Touchstone Pictures respectively, could not be better due to cinematography by Jost Vacano, who shifts is cinematic eye from three- to two-shots into character close-ups, marking a real benefit in coverage for editor Mark Goldblatt. Furthermore the live-action shots, shot at Sony Picture Studios in Culver City, California combined with much more realistic-conceived miniature works of spaceships plus Computer-Generated-Imagery (CGI) enhancements as production design by Allen Cameron come to an action highlight of the 1990s at an desert fortress exterior location with beyond belief accelerated mass effects of charging alien bugs onto a constant true-staying starship trooper platoon, where each and every one has the others back, including machine gun magazine switches as well as fast-decision made mercy killings, in a science-fiction war scenario of a rarely seen honest representation of violence, blood-letting, glory and guts spreading velocity.If this would not be enough to enjoy this science-fiction movie, additionally gets the picture infused with Internet-forecasting newsreel interludes, where satire of constant 4th wall breaking moderators report on a menacing interstellar bug plague, hitting the spectator's attention, raising eyebrows, even a laugh in certain moments, when a ten-year-old blonde boy in full body armor and machine gun in his hand states that he wants to do his part for humanity's balanced peace-keeping as well.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)

Peter Welch It came out in 1997, but if I didn't know better, I would think that Starship Troopers was a response to the George W. Bush presidency.Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) grows up in a futuristic world that values nationalism and military service above all else. Pressured by his girlfriend, his best friend, and his favorite high school teacher, Rico joins the army for peacetime service. While he is in boot camp however, the earth is hit by an asteroid and the nearby planet of Klendathu is blamed for the attack. This thrusts the army into war with the inhabitants of Klendathu. These inhabitants happen to be giant and extremely lethal bugs. Rico and his friends suffer great losses in this meaningless and bizarre war against the bugs.The film repeatedly shows the viewer how a manipulative government can use nationalism to do practically anything. Rico and his friends are seduced into military service by a complex government system that teaches young people that service is the only way a person can truly be a first-class citizen. This message is spread through media propaganda, the school system, and peer pressure. The message is somewhat rejected by an audience member, but the film's characters buy into this manipulation earnestly. Our characters walk into the buzzsaw of war with such honest excitement that a reasonable viewer doesn't even know how to feel other than mildly disgusted.When the earth is hit by the asteroid, the government again uses its ever-powerful propaganda machine to blame a colony of totally unintelligent insects for this "attack." Paradoxically, the government argues both that the "bugs" are responsible for the asteroid tragedy, and that all bugs are also worthless and totally unintelligent. If the bugs are unintelligent, how could they send an asteroid to earth? The answer is obvious to the viewer: the bugs had nothing to do with the asteroid and are being used as a political scapegoat. But, none of the characters in the film question this paradox. Instead, they unite under the maxim "the only good bug is a dead bug" and seek bloody revenge.The parallels to the September 11 attacks and the 2003 Iraq invasion are uncanny. In both cases, one could say that the government used the outrage and fear of the people in the wake of a tragedy as an excuse to invade an irrelevant place, resulting in massive losses. Maybe Starship Troopers was Verhoeven's attempt at a warning against a growing culture of nationalism in America- or maybe it was just chance that the film came right before the war. Life imitates art, I guess.In the military, the soldiers are absolutely dehumanized. In the film's first act, live rounds are used in boot camp training exercises, resulting in the death of a private. This man is not mourned at all and the film continues swiftly without much change. This shows how little the government cares about these soldiers. As the people in charge brush over this tragedy, all the other characters quickly forget about it as well. As the film goes on, this practice of ignoring/forgetting the loss of soldiers only intensifies. In their first battle with the bugs, we see scores of soldiers brutally eviscerated, but the surviving soldiers proudly celebrate their minor strategic successes shortly afterward without even a thought for their fallen friends. This juxtaposition is repulsive to the audience, who can see the extent of the brainwashing that the soldiers have undergone.(SPOILERS follow in this paragraph) Verhoeven's approach to this anti-war film is very unusual. The way I see it, the film intends to at first make its audience feel repulsed by the brutality of war and later make the audience accept the violence. By making the audience accept the violence, the film can show that even a reasonable viewer of the film can easily be subject to the same brainwashing as the characters. In the first few battles, loss and celebration are directly juxtaposed against each other in order to make the characters look like ignorant monsters with no empathy, but in the final battle, the pacing is laid out differently in an effort to get the audience themselves to legitimize the violence. In the film's climactic battle, two major characters are brutally killed: Rico's role model Lt. Rasczak and Rico's love interest Diz. Both characters have been established and developed well up to their deaths, and the audience reacts strongly to their loss. Both of these characters die early in the film's final battle, and their deaths are followed by 20-30 minutes of intense action, in which the humans finally begin to have major successes against the bugs. The audience is engaged through all of this, and feels pride and relief when the humans have their ultimate great success. By the end of the film, most of the main characters are reunited as heroes. At the film's final moments, Diz and Rasczak have been seemingly totally forgotten both by the characters and by the viewers. In essence, the viewer has become just as ignorant and apathetic as the characters.Completely ignoring the political subtext, Starship Troopers is a perfectly good action/war movie. The characters are intended to be somewhat shallow and stupid, but at the same time they always appear to be honest, and the viewer finds himself rooting for them at every stage of the movie. The effects are impressive for the film's era and the action is executed very well.In total, Starship Troopers is both a solid action movie and a weighty piece on the ills of nationalism. I would highly recommend the film to anyone who can stomach some extreme violence.

Dave This is an excellent action war science fiction satire with fast-paced battle scenes. Star Wars is boring nonsense compared to this.Why isn't Starship Troopers more popular? When I've mentioned it to people, most of them have never heard of it.

HaroldNaples It is a mixed bag of terrible acting and eye candy. Great special effects and repetitive action sequences. Poignant satire, boring American style futuristic totalitarianism and one dimensional characters. Its worth a watch for the humour alone which matches that of robocop, the CGI and for the bodies, though there could have been more on the female side. It inherits the flaws of the base material and the little acting talent there is on the set (Michael Ironside, Clancy Brown) does not redeem it.Stay away from the sequels, no joke.