Stars: Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, Dina Meyer, Jake Busey, Neil Patrick Harris, Patrick Muldoon, Michael Ironside, Richard Burgi

Director: Paul Verhoeven

Summary: The new millennium brings man face-to-face with the deadliest enemy of all, an intelligent race of alien bugs. Young freedom fighter Johnny Rico and his comrades join the elite cadet flying school where you need to be tough to survive. When Buenos Aires, Johnny's home town, is destroyed by the bugs, an all-out intergalactic war begins... Plus the sequel 'Starship Troopers 2 - Hero Of The Federation' which follows the adventures of a group of soldiers.

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Allowing for all the low-budget shortcomings that plague any straight-to-video production, Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federationserves up 92 minutes of passable SF action. Parlaying his veteran status as an animator, special-effects wizard, and stalwart survivor of the CGI revolution, Phil Tippett (with returning screenwriter Ed Neumeier) makes a woefully uninspired directorial debut with this makeshift sequel to Paul Verhoeven's 1997 blockbuster, retaining the jarhead militarism of Robert Heinlein's original novel while serving up more bugs, an all-new cast of attractive young stars and all-too-familiar plot elements borrowed from a dozen better movies.

"Bigger is better" is out of the question under such meagre budgetary circumstances, so Tippett and Neumeier compensate with gruesome bug fights and gross-out effects at regular intervals, some standard-issue nudity and escalating paranoia (echoing Carpenter's The Thing) when a new breed of bugs use human hosts (à la The Hidden) to overtake a stranded platoon of Federation soldiers on a bug-infested planet. Relying on murky confinement to hide nondescript sets, Starship Troopers 2has three engaging leads in its favour: US TV regular Richard Burgi is solidly cast as the titular hero (he's the military equivalent of Pitch Black's Riddick); Colleen Porch is engaging as the most sensible Federation survivor; and screen veteran Ed Lauter makes the most of his salty role as a battle-hardened general. Unfortunately, they're adrift in a knock-off sequel (shot on high-def digital video) that could never do justice to its energetic predecessor. --Jeff Shannon

Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Commentaries, Featurettes, Theatrical Trailers
Release Date:	May 10, 2004
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	C D T P 1643
Keywords:	Two, Box, General, Fiction, Starship, Set, Science, Troopers, Horror, Discs, Sci, Fi
Genre:	Science Fiction