I have to confess that I am not exactly the worlds biggest fan of the original Starship Troopers, but then this could have something to do with the fact that I'm not exactly the worlds biggest fan of director Paul Verhoeven either. He's a director that specializes in satirizing the media's obsession with violence, but then he is also an extremely disturbed individual whose love affair with graphic sex and violence kind of diminishes the impact that his satire should have on a viewer. Nevertheless the Starship Troopers universe does appeal to me; I have enjoyed the CGI animated series that came out of it purely because of the strong visuals, exciting adventure and cool monsters. With Verhoeven now out of the directors chair I was hoping for something similar in tone to that series; a pure action adventure war film with some cool monsters. Sadly the film failed to live up to the series; actually it failed to live up to the original too, as it ended up being a hollow and ultimately badly made experience.
This direct to video sequel starts as it means to go on. You have this squad of marines surrounded by giant bugs without a rescue ship in site. They hold up in an abandoned military installation where they meet Dax (the hero of the federation referred to in the title) a hero who was imprisoned in the furnace for shooting his General. Hesitant; but needing a man of his experience, they release Dax and employ his help in rebooting the bases defense systems. Meanwhile their own General; whom they believed dead, manages to make his way to this installation thanks to the help of 2 strange medics who are carrying a young woman that has been asleep since they first crashed onto this planet.
Being a low budget sci fi adventure it's safe to say that this girl; being blonde of haired and nice of bodied, is not going to be sleeping throughout the entire film. She wakes and is welcomed by the squad, particularly when she decides to start searching for a man to seduce. Failing Dax she settles for your A typical male pig that has no problems cheating on his girlfriend while she is in the next room. Trouble is that this good looking blonde who has enjoyed a few days napping and woken up burning with desire is not entirely normal. (you'd never have guessed would you?) She's part of the bugs latest plot, a previously unknown breed of bug that forces its way through the mouth, kills the host and then takes control of the body; with its intentions being to be picked up when the rescue ship does arrive and get back to Earth. A bad thing I assure you.
The concept was a little bit of a disappointment when I first put the film on; I was hoping for big bug shooting not body snatching, but eventually I realized that given the budget of a straight to video sequel this was the only story that wouldn't look abysmal. Still in terms of a low budget Body Snatchers type horror film it still fell short. Every time; and I mean literally every time, the bugs turned someone you were allowed to watch it happen. As a result the claustrophobia that can make or break the genre could be found nowhere in the story. There was no not knowing who to trust as you were already shown who was human and who was dead, and worse then that even with regard to the human characters I was able to separate them into who would stay human and who would die. Heck even in regards to the survivors I completely guessed what would happen to who at the end of the film, so needless to say I couldn't really class such a predictable story as suspenseful.
It fares better as an action movie, but even then it still approaches the subject without the right planning. It's the camera work, for once it's just too steady. I usually complain about hyperactive editing, and the pace of the basic camera movement is fine. It's just that when you're in the middle of a major battle against thousands of giant arachnids; with winds that are literally strong enough to blow soldiers away, then your camera shouldn't be so steady. It really needed for someone to get in there and give the camera a good shake, because as it stands the lazy camera work only succeeded at sucking me out of an already uninvolving film.
Still the film is not completely terrible, in fact it's relatively harmless. The acting in the film was nicely mediocre, never appalling but just never quite being good either. Richard Burgi does his best Michael Ironside impression for the character of Dax, and even though his character was never supposed to have anything to do with Ironsides does come across as genuinely hard. Colleen Porch has a strange charisma about her, a vulnerability of sorts that helps you to forget the rest of the film because you can't help but route for her pregnant psychic heroine. Ed Lauter nicely screamed "Look at me I'm a general who actually cares about his soldiers" in his role as the squads General, and Nip Tuck's Kelly Carlson was denied anything to work with, but still had all the requirements for the token nude blonde and so obviously fit her character. Other cast members were indistinguishable from each other, which was fine because the characters were indistinguishable too.
What the film did actually get right to a reasonable degree was the effects, or at least some of them anyway. The early scenes with the squad trying to survive the bug attacks were very impressive. While not quite as good as those in the original film these bugs did display a solidity that wouldn't have even hinted at the films mere 6 million price tag. Quite the contrary these bugs looked more realistic; to me at least, than most of the creature effects in Attack Of The Clones which cost at least 10 times more. As it moves on though even that goes down hill. Later effects; such as one unpleasant throat slash, suffer from being CGI when a little makeup would have been much cheaper and looked much more believable.
However like I said the film remains inoffensive in spite of all that. It may be a cheap, not particularly well acted straight to video film, but in comparison to other cheap made for TV films it remains ever so slightly watchable.
Parental Warning-or better known as the bit that convinces the kids to see the film
When I said that the film remains inoffensive I was referring to quality, not content. As I mentioned in my review there was some nudity. It wasn't wall to wall and any full frontal was shrouded in darkness, but there was still a little nekkidness. (as a few Epinionators have assured me it's pronounced) It did contain a lot of violence though. After the Saturday morning series I was hoping it would be toned down from what the first film showed, but decapitations, ripped flesh and blood splashes weren't exactly infrequent. It's nowhere near as gory as the original but if; like me, you don't like that sort of stuff then don't watch the film.
From Green Screen To Silver Screen kind of bored me. There's a line from the director there where he says "It's a bunch of people standing around and we flash a light on them. Not very interesting." and he's right. There is nothing interesting about watching a bunch actors standing around before showing the computer screens. Even with a boring person talking you through it a black screen with little white profiles running around is not interesting.
Inside The Federation was better. It's a 30 minute documentary that interviews various cast and crew members. The effects team got the brunt of the time as they gave a genuinely interesting insight into how the various effects were achieved, and the actors got to to talk about the themes that they perceived. I admit that a lot of the time I couldn't take these themes even remotely seriously, but special effects veteran Ray Harryhausen made an appearance so that must be a plus.
There's a photo gallery, but these never have, nor will they ever make an interesting DVD extra.
There's a TV spot trailer for this film that lasts a whole 15 seconds, plus cool theatrical trailers for Spiderman 2, Bad Boys 2, Hellboy, Once Upon A Time In Mexico, Welcome To The Jungle and Terminator 3. Plus there's one not very good trailer for the Starship Troopers series.
Average film, average disk. Has there ever been a more perfect union?
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