"Hooray for AMERICA! I mean...HITLER! I mean....Awww SHIT!" (reviewed by OG)

Starship Troopers: A film set in the very distant future where every high school student wants to become a "citizen' in order to be granted elite privileges. Everyone's young, beautiful, and annoying as shit, with parents labeled as those not to be trusted when trying to dissuade their offspring from joining up with the citizen's militia. After all, the only way to become a citizen is to become a state sponsored warrior. There's a planet infested with gigantic bugs a few million miles away from Earth, and you never know when those fuckers might attack. Bugs are not to be trusted. You know that. I know that. Everybody knows it. I mean...what's with you? They're different from us. Get with the program, dipshit.

HOLY FUCK! They've attacked! Those assholes just tossed a huge rock at us and our families are dead. It's time to mobilize and eradicate their entire species. Military power is now set to become priority number one, and anyone who disagrees is an unpatriotic bastard. After all...those bugs destroyed the World Trade Center and...

Woah...wait. I lost track here.

Ahem...back to the topic at hand. Starship Troopers, with its internal message of self destruction as a parasite to victory, is a perfect subject for a massive DVD release. The film, on a visceral level, delivers fantastically, with action sequences and battles that simultaneously dazzle and disgust. Body parts and blood spray the screen as we follow Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien), Carmen Ibanez (Denise Richards), and a whole crew of 90210 rejects through an interstellar war. The acting is laughable, but that's the whole point. The film is a 50's B-flick wrapped in a multi million dollar budget, but by the time the grand finale hits you, the films true thesis leaps out like a fucking gangbuster. At the turning point of victory, the "good guys"' head scientist emerges to examine a captured bug and...VOILA!...is dressed like a Nazi SS officer. Well...ain't that just a kick in the balls? Through complete militarization you have not only achieved victory over an "inferior" race, but you've turned your chain of command into a soulless dictatorship. How you like them apples. By the end of this flick, you realize that what you've been watching has NOT been a simple story being told on a screen, but a mock neo-Nazi propaganda reel. Director Paul Verhoven has officially kicked you in the nuts.

So...if you think I'm full of shit and on some political head trip...feel free to check out the DVD, which dissects the theories in Heinlein's original novel, as well as in the finished film. The 1st disc is a SuperBit reproduction of the film, which looks and sounds as perfect as you can possibly get it. The 2nd disc, however, offers a ton of cool shit...including a new documentary discussing the director's motives and messages, as well as deleted scenes, storyborads, early effects tests, screen rehearsals, and much more.

On one level, Starship Troopers (Star Ship = SS...get it?) works as a massive critique of military power and a public's feeble and unthinking acceptance of it in times of crisis (when the opportunistic make their biggest moves...just look at what Bush did with the military after the 9/11 bombing). On a second level, it's a bad-ass monster b-flick. Either way, you'll enjoy it...unless, that is, the truth is hard as hell for you to swallow.

Bon appetit!

(6.15.02)