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Salon | Melrose vs. the monsters |
 | | More than half of the original "Starship Troopers" is devoted to accounts of Johnny's training -- first in a brutal boot camp that takes in soft kids and turns out killing machines, and later in an officers' program that teaches him how to be a leader of men. |
 | | The "Starship Troopers" screenwriter, Ed Neumeier, who also collaborated with Verhoeven on "Robocop," rewrites Heinlein's spare, male-dominated story, embedding an unabashedly formulaic romantic plot in the story's brutal heart: Ace fighter Dizzy (Dina Meyer) loves Johnny, but Johnny loves crack pilot Carmen (Denise Richards), but Carmen's kinda more into her co-pilot, Zander (Patrick Muldoon). |
 | | Nothing in "Starship Troopers" carries the conviction of the Force or even "Independence Day's" rah-rah-for-mankind idealism; the movie can't commit to the militarism it inherited from Heinlein, and it never finds a different ideal to substitute. |
| www.salon.com /ent/movies/1997/11/07starship.html (1030 words) |
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