Apart from Basic Instincts, Dutch director Paul Verhoeven is perhaps best known in Hollywood for his blockbuster sci-fi movies like Hollow Man and Robocop. This is a review of his most acclaimed sci-fi movie Starship Troopers (1997), which is based on the book Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein and bears an unanimously acknowledged resemblance to World War II politics and society.
Story of Starship Troopers
Starship Troopers tells the story of a great battle waged between planet Earth and a far off planet inhabited by giant bugs, who are in the process of colonization, through the eyes of a young and promising soldier Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) and his girlfriend Carmen.
After a Pearl Harbor style attack on Buenos Aires by the bugs catches the humans unprepared and kills hundreds and thousands of humans, the commanders of the human resistance takes a decision to take the battle to the bugs and obliterate their entire species. But the humans have greatly underestimated the intelligence of the bugs, who seems to have developed a profound understanding of the human thought process and can anticipate their each and every move and are always one step ahead of their biped invaders. Soon it becomes clear that the bugs possess a very strong ruling class-- the 'brain bug' which has an ability to feed on the human brain and learn more about the human psyche, enabling it to formulate strategies to defeat the humans.
Now Rico and his Mobile Infantry is entrusted with the difficult task of penetrating deep into enemy territory to capture the brain bug so that the human scientists can study it and finally come up with a strategy to defeat the bugs.
Review of Starship Troopers
Like just about every other Paul Verhoeven movie Starship Troopers makes no attempt to be sleek, suave or funny, it is extremely graphic, violent and intentionally disturbing. However, it is not another one of those mindless sci-fi slug fests but an exceptionally subtle antiwar movie and its greatest irony is that everything the movie 'focuses' on-- the mind blowing visuals and special effects, the unreasonably graphic violence or the slightly wooden acting-- serves to camouflage the actual moral of the story: an Utopian society where all humans are united, patriotic and honorable may only serve to amplify the very problems it is meant to solve! And this is not just a theory but has been proven throughout American history--the colonization of America, World War II, 9/11.
However, be warned that like many of Verhoeven's previous movies this is also a cult classic and may appear offensive to some, especially the grotesque battle scenes and above all the fact that the 'good guys' have a striking resemblance with the Nazis.
Anish Dasgupta - Hi ya folks, I'm an 18 years old undergraduate currently studying Chemical Engineering. Apart from that I'm an active blogger ( ...
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