Move over, John Waters. There’s a new martin Luther King of schlock in town, and he’s got a much bigger budget.
The recent video release of last year’s Starship Troopers reveals a superior at work, comfortably at home in his truest of elements: cheesy action films. Paul Verhoeven is the master in head, the director of such fare as RoboCop and Basic Instinct—his last-place really successful film, in 1992. With a $95 million budget, Troopers eventually grossed a little o'er half that domestically, but it has done well enough abroad to control that, like Schwarzenegger in Verhoeven’s Total Recall, he’ll be back.
Watching Troopers is a much different experience than watching, order, Aliens. While both are oriented some the in large quantities slaughter of an stranger race (giant bugs this time), Aliens treats its plot with complete distressfulness. Troopers is a bit more underhand, feeding you a extra effects extravaganza (which include, in all honesty, some of the best I’ve ever seen) with one hand, and slapping you with the leather boxing glove of history with the other. In fact, what makes Troopers—and the holy Writ it’s based on, I’m told—so gratifying is its ode to fascism. Whether it’s Neil Patrick Harris in a fully-buttoned, black leather S.S. trench coat or the “I’m doing my part!” propagandist chants, the court is conspicuous. And, it’s an incredibly entertaining look into what must have been going through the minds of whitney Moore Young Jr. Nazi recruits.
If this isn’t sufficiency to interest you, Verhoeven doesn’t pull whatever stops with the total tilt cheesefest. The cast of the likes of the whiter-than-white Harris, Meyer, Richards, and Van Dien as Argentinians is the first tip-off that you’re in for a screamer of a time. But wait, there’s more! Troopers has sadistic drill sergeants, co-ed grouping showers, and some of the richest dialogue in cinema. One of the best lines comes from Muldoon’s Zander, directed at the bugs, when he screams “One day somebody like me is gonna kill you and your whole FUCKIN' RACE!”
So cut Paul some slack and check out Starship Troopers. Throw in Showgirls for a really tasty double feature. After all, it’s going to take some solid telecasting rental revenues to make sure Verhoeven gets backing for another big-budget free-for-all.
And hey... I’m doing my part!
See Also
Wednesday 6 August 2008
Starship Troopers - 8/5/2008
