Starship Troopers (1997)

Director: Paul Verhoeven

Cast: Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer, Denise Richards, Neil Patrick Harris

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure. All young people think they’ll have the same buzzy, borderline narcotic feeling for all of Verhoeven’s films that they had when they first saw Robocop (1987)*.

Did I Like It: You can keep your Showgirls (1995) and your Hollow Man (2002), this is as good as late-stage American Verhoeven can get. And this is even excluding the fact that Denise Richards has never been able to get anywhere in the vicinity of being able to act. I can’t say Van Dien is all that better of a performer than his love interest, but Van Dien is at least able to fit into the testosterone heavy parts of the film. I don’t think Richards has ever fit into a role correctly. I must be mellowing in my increasingly older age. Time was, one resoundingly false performance can obliterate an entire movie. I’m not sure when I got to the point where I can look past something like that.

There’s enough of the demented political satire present in Verhoeven’s best to keep things interesting, but you really have to want to get what’s going on in order to get it. Something about the crowd I saw this with made me think that they were resolutely on the side of not just the humans, but the humans with enough moral fortitude to strive for citizenship.

The film is resoundingly on the side of the bugs, and at this point so am I. They’ve made some mistakes, sure, but I don’t think they started traveling among the stars wanting to start any trouble. They were just prepared with trouble when it came.

And I don’t care what the brain bug did, no one deserves that kind of treatment.

*When not edited for TV, naturally.

Total Recall (1990)

Director: Paul Verhoeven

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rachel Ticotin, Sharon Stone, Ronny Cox

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. But strangely, it feels like my first exposure to the film (and thus, the one that sticks with me the most) is the image of Arnold in a dress getting sucked out through a crack in the Mars colony, which was in every comic book published in 1990 as part of the print campaign (kids, ask your parents) for the NES video game.

Did I Like It: My more effusive reviews tend to answer that question with something that can be boiled down to “Yes, let me me tell you why.” Here, my answer will be something along the line of, “Yes. However...” And I assure you, only some of my reservation stem from the realization that I might have internalized parts of this for certain other projects. That it stealthily influenced me so is more of a mark in its favor, I think.

Yes, I do like this film. However, I’m thinking this is not the best work of anyone involved. Schwarzenegger plays slightly against type as an every man propelled into extraordinary circumstances. The ruse never quite works, as no one’s been able to convince me that the Austrian Oak is not directly descended from the Man of Bronze*. He’s probably the most fully realized version of the movie star that is Arnold in a movie like Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). He even improved on the every-man/super-spy dichotomy more in True Lies (1994). 

Verhoeven has flashes of the satirical anarchist that made him one of the greats, but if you think you’re going to get me to forsake RoboCop (1987) in favor of this movie, you’ve got another thing coming.

I don’t think I’m out of line in saying there are other, more robust adaptations of Dick’s work. You’re going to say Blade Runner (1982), but you’re wrong. The correct answer is Minority Report (2002).

Even Jerry Goldsmith has had more memorable scores. Gremlins (1984), Star Trek: First Contact (1996), Rudy (1993). Hell, his score is one of the best parts of The Shadow (1994).

So the film is good, but I couldn’t help but want to watch their other, sharper work.

*Why didn’t this man ever play Doc Savage? It seems like one of the supreme missed opportunities in pop culture. He could still play an older Doc... Hell, I would watch the shit out of that movie. Never mind me. Feel free to return to the review proper.

Robocop (1987)

Director: Paul Verhoeven

Cast: Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Ronny Cox, Kurtwood Smith

Have I Seen It Before?: There’s something fascinating about the image of Robocop, as exemplified in the poster above. It enflamed the imagination of this reviewer as a child (and I’m willing to hazard a guess that I wasn’t the only one). Whenever it would air on network TV, it was appointment viewing. By the time I could procure R-rated films (and it is one of the R-iest R-rated films to come down the pike), it was one of the first I got my hands on.

Did I like it?: And it didn’t disappoint. In truth, the reality is that this film makes me angry. There’s a point about three-fourths through the film where I become pointedly depressed that in my own efforts, I’m never going to make anything as good as this. This film is so good that I have infinite patience for anything with the Robocop name on it, even when that patience is continuously tested by an endless series of lame attempts (that steadfastly avoid any understanding of what makes this film so special) to recapture the glory displayed here.

It is equal parts biting satire (that has become increasingly true), and pure Campbellian hero myth. It’s a silly title, but for my money, it’s a perfect movie.

And, yet… Now we live in an era where it is difficult to look at a cop in a film as a hero, much less a tragic one. It’s also an action movie from the 1980s; you can play any random thirty seconds and find a handful of problematic things. Take his prime directives, an attempt at a heroic code:

1.       Serve the Public Trust

2.       Protect the Innocent

3.       Uphold the Law

4.       (CLASSIFIED) Any attempt to arrest an officer of Omni Consumer Products results in shutdown.

The fourth directive is clearly the main fuel of stories involving the characters, but when you dig into it further, his very design is fascist. Everyone is theoretically innocent until proven guilty, but Robocop (Weller) has no problem eviscerating (and castrating) piles of crooks long before they’ve been able to see an attorney. With a logical flaw in his overriding programming, it’s a wonder Robo didn’t join the HAL 9000 in trying to obliterate every full-human being in sight just to make logical sense of the world.

There may be good cops, but the system is not interested in letting them stay good. That the slightest wisps of a human being encased in military hardware can still reach for their own humanity, maybe there is some hope. It is, after all, a fantasy.