Review of Starship Troopers

Introduction

Paul Verhoeven seems to be drawn towards sci-fi movies. In 1987 he brought us the brutal but brilliant Robocop - a bleak look at life in a future city overrun by crime, then came Total Recall in 1990, another futuristic action thriller and more recently in 2000 we were been treated to the sci-fi horror Hollow Man.

Starship Troopers came in 1997 - between Total Recall and Hollow Man (I`m deliberately ignoring Basic Instinct and Showgirls) and follows the fortunes of a group of friends from Buenos Aires. The three leave school and sign up to be "Citizens of the Federation" in the face of threats from alien bugs who are bombarding Earth with asteroids. One of the three becomes a pilot, one goes into military intelligence and the other into the mobile infantry.

Following the destruction of Buenos Aires by a bug asteroid which wipes out the city and kills or wounds tens of millions of people, war is declared on the bugs and the forces are mobilised. The first battle sees the starships drop troops onto the planet Klendathu, but the intelligence reports of low resistance prove to be wrong and during the brutal battle, some 300,000 troops are killed, and scores of starships destroyed or damaged.

After the Federation is forced to retreat, they rethink their tactics and decide to attack the outlying planets first to lower resistance. This eventually leads to a final showdown where the three are united again in their moment of triumph.

Video

Video is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen and is of a very high standard throughout the movie. There are no artefacts, grain or compression evident and the picture is detailed and stable.

Starship Troopers is laden with special effects and this DVD really shows off just how good they are. I had never realised how good the bugs looked until I saw this disc - they are superbly animated and in the scenes where there are hundreds of them - look out for them attacking each other and doing "their own thing" - there`s no simple cloning of one model here. Similarly impressive are the space scenes - there is so much going on during the drops and it is all very crisp and smooth.

Audio

The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is also of a good standard and when combined with the excellent visuals provides a very satisfying experience for the viewer.

Good use is made of the rear channels throughout the film, with plenty of atmospheric sound in evidence during the scenes set in Buenos Aires and the training camp. However, when you get to the numerous battle scenes, the sound really comes alive, with gunfire, expolosions, bugs scurrying about, screams etc all reverberating around the soundstage.

The score from Basil Poledouris is at times very similar to his music for Robocop but fits in well with the movie.

Features

Unlike the spartan Region 2 offering, the Region 1 disc gets a healthy range of extra features, most of these are on the reverse side of the disc.

Included are additional scenes, directors commentary, theatrical trailer, documentary featurette, behind-the-scenes footage and screen tests.

The movie is packaged in a black Amaray case and contains a fold out insert providing some background information on the movie as well as the chapter breaks.

Conclusion

Starship Troopers is an enjoyable movie, but one probably best suited to a night in with the lads and a crate of beer, rather than a night in with the girlfriend and a bottle of wine. One reason for this is that as with other Verhoeven movies, Starship Troopers doesn`t pull any punches and has a great deal of violence and gore that won`t be to everyone`s taste, although personally I loved it!

The presentation of the movie is very similar to Robocop, with occasional interludes for TV reports and adverts, but these are used to provide extra plot information rather than humour.

The plot is nothing new - filmmakers have been making movies about aliens attacking earth for years, but usually we fight them on our own turf. Starship Troopers takes the fight onto another planet and adds a new angle. Also, aliens usually tend to look fairly similar to humans and generally carry some sort of futuristic weapon, however in Starship Troopers the aliens are huge insects that make do with huge jaws and stabbing/cutting their prey with their legs - making for some extremely brutal battle scenes. When I first saw this film several years ago, I wasn`t expecting it to be so violent and even now there are some scenes which bring an involuntary "ouch".

Starship Troopers is also helped by having (at the time) fairly unknown actors/actresses playing the lead roles (with the exception of Michael Ironside) - the film wouldn`t quite be the same with someone like Tom Cruise as Rico. The cast all play their parts well and for a change the two leading ladies actually have a part to play in an action film instead of just looking gorgeous (which of course they both do throughout the movie!).

Good picture and sound, reasonable extras and 130 minutes of entertainment make this a recommended DVD.

Also, if you`ve got a multi-region machine and had been thinking about the Region 2 version of Starship Troopers...don`t it contains no extras and worse still is a flipper so you`ll have to get off you backside and turn it over half-way through.