Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5325 in DVD
• Released on: 2001-06-11
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Dubbed, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English, French, Dutch
• Dubbed in: Italian
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 124 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
A gloriously over-the-top treat, Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers takes the militaristic moralising of Robert Heinlein's pulp classic and sets about undermining it mercilessly. Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) desperately wants to join the Mobile Infantry and kill some Earth-threatening alien bugs. He also desperately wants Carmen (Denise Richards), but only gets to fulfil one ambition in the second of Verhoeven's futuristic satires (also cowritten with his RoboCop scriptwriter Ed Neumeier).

Set in a fascistic future where kids must do military service to qualify as citizens, own property or even have babies, the film's dark Vietnam and Nazi-era parallels are all the more disturbing given its deceptively sunny Beverly Hills 90210 teenage cast (though scenery-chewing veteran Michael Ironside steals the movie as tough-talking Lt Rasczak). The CGI arachnids are among the most convincing and dangerous-looking creatures ever seen on screen, and with the movie clocking up the highest number of blanks ever fired on a film set, it's also pretty loud! Verhoeven went on to be Executive Producer of the Roughnecks: The Starship Troopers Chronicles animated TV series a couple of years later.

On the DVD: Starship Troopers in this DVD incarnation can now be played continuously on one side of the disc (the original Region 2 release version was that crime against the DVD format, a "flipper"). You'll also feel really spoiled by the extras here: five deleted scenes (approximately six minutes) pad out Carmen's love triangle problems. There are impressive screen tests for Denise Richards and Casper Van Dien (three-and-a-half minutes). An eight-minute featurette zips by with key interviews and fact flinging. And a real treat is three scene developments with layers of FX work explained by Verhoeven. But what makes this DVD essential is the director's enthusiastic commentary alongside screenwriter Ed Neumeier: dissing astrology, making a stand for feminist issues, saying how he went nude to placate the actors for their shower scene, and drooling with praise for his FX team, Verhoeven makes a fascinating statement that "war makes fascists of us all". After a studio disclaimer, and beginning with his reaction to the film's critique in Time Magazine, this is no-holds-barred fun. --Paul Tonks

Video Description
DVD Special Features

Interactive Menus
Scene Access
Languages in Dolby Digital: English/French/Italian
Subtitles: English/French/Dutch/English Close Captioned

Synopsis
Some time in the future, a group of friends joins Earth's military forces after high school graduation to battle the insectoid Klendathu. One fights for the chance to be a renowned pilot (Denise Richards), one for revenge (Casper Van Dien), and one for the love of a good man (Dina Meyer), but interpersonal relationships take a backseat to the firepower leveled against (and returned from) the chitinous aliens. Paul Verhoeven's subversively humourous and thrilling sci-fi film is adapted from the classic science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein.

Customer Reviews

Brilliant satire
I think a lot of people, including some reviewers here, soft-pedal or miss the really brutal satire at work here. It was trashed by one US reviewer when it came out as 'Melrose Place Goes to War' (in reference to a now long defunct Beverly Hills 90210 knock off), which in a sense it is, but that's the point. It presaged our current conflicts, but the film is more relevant and funnier now than ever, dressing up beautiful people in post-Wehrmacht garb and sending them off to have their brains sucked out while in the heartland women encourage their kids to stamp on bugs. Otherwise, the effects are cartoonish but fun and the world scarily recognisable...

Works on different levels
What some reviewers and probably many viewers fail to realise with this film is that it cleverly works on two levels. Yes there is the fun shoot-em-up, man-versus-the-bug-aliens with a too-cute cast with great special effects and a fast pace. However, this film is deliberately cheesy/plastic in places and doesn't too-honestly portray the book for the very reason that it is actually satirising Heinlein's original work and his overtly McCarthyite 1950s American militaristic politics and moralising. The film cleverly makes fun of all those attitudes and its particularly sad that this side of the film is lost on most viewers because some political observers might consider that modern American politics in the Bush era is heading in the same direction as Heinlein and the 1950s.

One of the most impressive sci-fi movies ever made
Although it lacks the magical aura of the Star Wars movies, I regard Starship Troopers as one of the finest science fiction films ever made. The graphics are incredible and the storyline pulses with a strong dash of a sociopolitical critique. In the future, you are either a citizen or a civilian; only citizens can vote, and the only guaranteed manner in which to earn citizenship is voluntary service in the Federation's armed forces. The movie begins with a series of propagandistic news teasers about the state of the threat posed to mankind by the giant alien bugs of the Klendathu system on the other side of the galaxy, a civilization that has been launching deadly meteors at Earth for some time. In the middle of the carnage of the ill-fated invasion of Klendathu, the scene shifts back to the year before. Johnny Rico (Caspar Van Dien) signs up for military service because his girlfriend Carmen Ibanez (Denise Richards) has joined up with the hope of becoming a pilot; their mutual friend Carl Jenkins (Neil Patrick Harris) also joins up. While Carmen is accepted to flight school and Jenkins is assigned to military intelligence, Rico is made a grunt in the Mobile Infantry. He is joined there by another former classmate, Dizzy Flores (played wonderfully by Dina Meyer), who has long had her eye on Rico. Boot camp is incredibly harsh and difficult because the MI only wants the best soldiers. Before long, a Klendathu meteor strikes the earth, wiping Buenos Aires off the map, and the armed forces quick launch an invasion of Klendathu. The rest of the movie revolves around the continuing war effort, featuring some incredible battle scenes with loads of gory realism.

This is Rico's story. He joined up for the wrong reasons (but I can certainly understand how a Denise Richards could influence such a decision), soon receives a "Dear John" video letter from Carmen (although their paths will cross again), and indirectly causes the death of one of his squad members, but when the war begins he quickly becomes not only a real soldier but a real leader, as well. This is no easy task, as his climb in the ranks is made possible by the death of those he serves under. I love Denise Richards, but her role in the movie never quite seemed to fit her. All she cares about is flying, and she is quick to ingratiate herself upon those she thinks can help her make it to the fleet academy; in space, she quickly forgets all about Rico and teams up with her direct supervisor. There is very little human about her--contrast this with Dizzy, who is very down to earth and serves as the true heroine of the action. Possibly in line with the rather obvious fascist satire of the one-world earth federation, the military intelligence guys dress like the Gestapo, and believe me when I say that seeing Doogie Howser in a Gestapo-like getup is a rather surreal experience.

The effects are top of the line. The CGI animation of the giant bugs is incredible and very realistic; they rely on their pointed appendages rather than actual weapons to skewer and slash the enemy, and they really know how to tear into a human body. It takes a lot of bullets to kill them, and they die rather messily. The deaths of earth's soldiers is also ultra-realistic and realistically gory. As morbid as this sounds, I must say that nowhere else have I seen beheadings done so perfectly and believably. Most impressive of all are the visual effects of earth's spaceships; the explosions in space are of epic proportions, and we see greatly detailed features of ships splitting in two, crashing, and burning.

While this movie may not be true to the original Heinlein spirit, it nevertheless does succeed as thought-provoking moviemaking at its best. The social and political implications of the type of future society presented here are quite relevant to the world as we know it today, as are the insights into fighting a world-wide war against enemies we may not truly understand. The warfare is intense and the heroic actions of many of the movie's characters are awe-inspiring, but the movie pulls no punches in bringing home the fact that war is a terrible, ugly business and warns us that we must really know our enemies before launching a war against them. I won't go into the various subplots, but they hold the movie together and really force its points home on the viewer. At 130 minutes long, you really get your money's worth--this is science fiction movie-making at its best.