Starship Troopers

(Paul Verhoeven, US 1997, 131 min., 35mm)

National Parks. On a near-future Earth where citizenship is conferred through military service, a group of high school graduates enlist to fight giant alien insects and discover that war is not the game it is on television. A sendup of Robert A. Heinlein’s classic 1959 novel, Starship Troopers is a ruthless satire of right-wing militarism, propaganda, and the military-industrial complex. With a particularly violent battle sequence on an alien planet shot in South Dakota’s Badlands National Park, Starship Troopers pulls out all the stops on the blood and guts and delivers an experience not easily forgotten.