Starship Troopers

Based on a dubious science fiction novel by Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers is a briliantly filmed war spectacle for jaded adolescents, and at the same time a radical critique of it. You could say that this is Paul Verhoeven's first subversive super-production from Hollywood to his credit. In a crypto-fascist state where everyone looks blissfully happy, the youth (boys and girls with the plastic look of the well-endowed dolls from Melrose Place and Beverly Hills, 90210) are prepared to fight the disgusting enemy: giant insects that threaten the survival of the planet. This culminates in unimaginable carnage, an orgy of destruction and mutilation with no end in sight, and in which Uncle Sam's patriotism and jingoism is raised to grotesque heights.