Starship Troopers 2 - Hero of the Federation
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 sci-fi 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 1997blockbuster, 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 meager budgetary circumstances, so Tippett and Neumeier compensate with gruesome bugfights and gross-out effects at regular intervals, some standard-issue nudity, and escalating paranoia (echoing Carpenter'sThe Thing) when a new breed of bugs use human hosts (à laThe Hidden) to overtake a stranded platoon of Federation soldiers on a bug-infested planet. Relying on murky confinement to hide nondescript sets,Troopers 2has three engaging leads in its favor: TV regular Richard Burgi is solidly cast as the titular hero (he's the military equivalent ofPitch 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