Date: Fri 05-Dec-1997

Publication: Bee

Author: JUDYC

Quick Words:

Playing-Verhoeven-Troopers

Full Text:

(rev "Starship Troopers" for Now Playing, 12/5/97)

Now Playing--

What Is Verhoeven Trying To Say?

By Trey Paul Alexander III

As they say, "Be careful what you wish for... you may get it." After a summer

littered with big-budget flicks lacking in substance (see The Lost World ,

Batman & Robin and Speed 2 , for starters), an outcry went out against movies

that run amuck with their visual effects just because they can, and a plea was

put forth for films that would use the available technology as a means to tell

a story, not as the story's primary reason for being. So, along comes Starship

Troopers , another big-money movie with grandiose special effects and,

surprise, surprise: aliens! This TriStar picture arrived looking like all the

rest, but when the final credits rolled, this stunned moviegoer was left with

his head spinning and more than a bit taken aback at what had transpired.

Let me just say upfront, I'm still not quite sure what to make of Starship

Troopers . Is it an ultra-violent sci-fi flick seeking to jolt audiences

accustomed to such violently voyeuristic TV and video programs as World's

Deadliest Swarms, When Animals Attack and Faces of Death ? Is it a subversive

parody of crowd-pleasing genre flicks like Star Wars ? Is it a sly, sleek

updating of the World War II film? Is it a satire of Nazi propaganda? Is it a

comment on gender roles and the parts men and women play in society? Or is it

just a maddening mish-mash of all the above, not meant to make any grand

statement, but designed to stir up controversy?

The primary figure behind all this lunacy is Paul Verhoeven, a talented yet

demented director who, to put it politely, has got some issues. This is the

guy behind such popular films as Robocop and Total Recall , but is also

responsible for the controversial Basic Instinct , and the heavily hyped NC-17

flop, Showgirls . Verhoeven instills Starship Troopers with the same biting

wit he displayed in Robocop as he gives us a fascist-chic future in which

SS-looking troops gaze into the screen and proclaim, "I'm doing my part!"

Doe-eyed youngsters enlist to become "citizens" so they can take on an evil

force threatening to overwhelm the earth and its populace. The main

protagonists include pretty-as-a-picture leads seemingly plucked from Aaron

Spelling's soap factory: Casper Van Dien (as Mobile Infantry enlistee Johnny

Rico), Denise Richards (Carmen Ibanez, Johnny's high school crush and a

starship pilot wannabe), Dina Meyer (tough gal Dizzy Flores), Patrick Muldoon

(Johnny's darkly handsome rival for Carmen), and Neil Patrick Harris (the

actor formerly known as Doogie Howser, now playing Johnny and Carmen's brainy,

psychic buddy).

While the good guys are model-caliber beautiful, the menace to the human race

is literally objectified in Starship Troopers . The villains pitted against

our attractive young heroes are buggy beasties that look like that most

despised of earthly creatures, the spider. There is one slight difference:

these "arachnoids" are 15-foot monsters with razor sharp talons for legs!

Lightning quick and relentlessly ferocious, these aliens can easily hack a

person to pieces (and Verhoeven, pleasant tour guide of a director that he is,

graphically shows us all they can do, numerous times). These are not exactly

the kind of eight-legged insects one can trample under foot, or douse with a

can of Raid. Formidable foes they are, to say the least, but eventually one

begins to wonder, what do they want from us?

More to the point, what is Verhoeven trying to say to us, the viewers?

Starship Troopers is chock full of gore and grisly details, but it's not the

kind of disconcerting depiction, a la Braveheart , that makes us want to swear

off the act of war. Yet neither is it cartoon violence -- a la most

Schwarzenegger flicks -- that can easily be shrugged off. There are also some

tossed in gratuitous scenes, like a sequence in which we are shown that both

male and female recruits shower together. Maybe you want to argue Verhoeven is

trying to make some kind of statement about gender equality and dismantling of

sexual boundaries, but I think it's just another example of his unleashing his

perverse fantasies upon us (there was a similar throwaway scene in Robocop ).

If there is any point to Verhoeven's orchestrated mayhem, it may be that if

something is dressed up well enough, we mere mortals will sign up and root for

just about anything. Johnny, who eventually becomes a celebrated soldier,

initially signs up just to follow Carmen who, as another character puts it,

joins the military because she thinks she'll look great in the uniform.

Verhoeven populates his film with fresh-faced actors with great teeth and pits

them against ugly, disgusting, giant bugs and puts them through sadistic,

carnage-filled paces in which the body count is high and much of the cast gets

killed off. Near the climax of this admittedly exciting and often gripping

film, one does begin to wonder what in the world is going on and why on earth

are all these people going to their deaths? Plus, the film ends on such an

open-ended note that it's not so much leaving the door open for a sequel as it

is leaving the door open for questions on the characters' motivations and the

validity of this war against the bugs.

Starship Troopers is rated R. Do not take this rating lightly. The film is

extremely graphic and includes many gory depictions, profanity and some sexual

situations, including nudity.