Starship Troopers

Its a Friday night, I'm home alone and I'm bored. I'm not trying to get your sympathy but I'm sure you will feel some for me after the end of this review. So I went on Netflix and, for those of you who live in the States, I've got to tell you how lucky you are because your Netflix has a way bigger selection of films. Our one in the UK has about 20 films on it. Not really but you know, we have limited choices. So I searched the thriller section as I usually do and came across this film called Starship Troopers. The name sounded familiar, it was under the "action thrillers" genre so I went onto the IMDB website and looked it up. It got 7 stars; I was sold.

So I got myself all cosied up, lights down low, iPad propped against a cushion, hot water bottle; the whole shebang. The first thing that struck me was that it was not going to be a serious film. It starts with an advert to join what they call the "Federal Service" which is, in essence, a space army. It's completely spoofy. The music was over the top while a reporter stood in front of a backdrop of disembodied limbs, encouraging viewers to join. Then suddenly we get thrown back a year to a high school classroom full of stock jock characters, bimbos and over-eager teachers. Then it slowly dawns on me that it was essentially going to be a teen-sci-fi-action-spoof-thriller and I'm thinking "how the hell is that going to work?" *spoiler alert* It didn't. 

"Kill them! Kill them all!" really does a great job of summing up the whole plot. And by them, I mean the giant alien bugs and by "kill" I do mean kill. Netflix wasn't lying when they said it was an action film. There were plenty of people getting blown up, ripped apart and having their brains sucked out, but what it did lack entirely, was suspense. The main criteria for a thriller is suspense which is why I felt cheated by Netflix and it is also why I feel as though, by putting this on my thriller review blog, I am, in a way, cheating you. I'm sorry. I just had to make those hours I wasted watching this film count.  

One positive thing I can say about this film is that the makers played around with the voyeuristic nature of us humans. There was another advert at one point for a live execution that evening. There was also live coverage of soldiers being killed. I was shocked at this, but then I thought, hey, isn't that what we're doing by watching this film? People do die in wars and, by watching war films, in a way, we want to see a reenactment of those deaths. We are sick, people! 

But back to the criticism: I remember thinking to myself, at various points: "interesting things are happening, but I'm not interested." I didn't care if any of the characters died. And that's because the characters were completely two dimensional. For me, there were no interesting character traits portrayed in any of them. They were all just basically killing machines. The above quote somewhat proves this.

And killing the bugs was very necessary. They, like most extra-terrestrial beings, were hostile creatures, and there was one bug in particular that I found very alarming. It kind of looked like a giant brain and, coincidently, it's favourite past-time seemed to be eating brains. So the one thing I can say I've learnt from watching this film is you are what you eat.

A fair 5/10. Watch it if you want to see lots of people dying in terrifyingly horrific ways.