Author: Bert Ehrmann

Dangerous Universe has been Bert’s web playground since 1998 when personal web sites were a rarity rather than the norm.

Starship Troopers: Invasion Movie Review

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Grade C- : I am a fan of the Starship Troopers universe. I love the book, the early 2000’s TV series and especially the 1997 film. But while I dig those pieces, the sequels that followed the first film have been bad at best and terrible at worst. That’s why I was so excited about the animated Starship Troopers: Invasion (trailer) movie that was released on-demand a while back and is due out on DVD and Blu-ray August 28. It seemed like that film could take all of the best bits of Starship Troopers; interesting story, giant bugs, lots of action and discard all the negative bits; namely the limitations of a live-action and low-budget.

Unfortunately, Invasion plays out like an extended scene from a video game that’s heavy on action but light on logic.

In Invasion, the starship “Alesia” is missing and it’s up to a team of troopers to take it back from the bugs. There are a few twists and turns along the way and a few new bugs to boot, but that’s about it. Once the troopers land on the Alesia they shoot bugs, and bugs kill troopers. And since the troopers all wear the same suits of armor I was never sure if those being killed were characters I was supposed to care about or the nameless “red shirt” masses seemingly there only to meet a gruesome end at the maws of the bugs.

Worst of all, since Invasion is rated “R” there was lots of cursing and even nudity and sex that felt totally out of place in a 3D animated film. I felt “icky” after watching Invasion and it wasn’t because of all the blood in the movie.

Still, while Invasion isn’t a great movie by any means, it’s still much better than the Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation (2004) and Starship Troopers 3: Marauder (2008) sequels.

The Raid: Redemption Movie Review

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Grade C+: In The Raid: Redemption (trailer), a SWAT team in an unnamed country raids a residential building that’s been taken over by criminals. Their aim is simple; to remove crime lord Tama (Ray Sahetapy) and his minions from from the building and return it to the people. But things don’t go as planned and when the SWAT team with rookie officer Rama (Iko Uwais) finds out that their raid is unauthorized with no one knowing where they are, it’s too late. They’re already inside and team find themselves with the unenviable task of fighting their way back out of the building through hundreds of killers all out for their blood.

The Raid reminded me a great deal of the John Carpenter classic Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), except here instead of the bad guys trying to break into the building housing the cops they’re instead trying to keep the cops from breaking out. However, I’d say the big difference between The Raid and Assault on Precinct 13 is that whereas Assault had an interesting story, The Raid was mostly martial arts fight scenes only interrupted by little strings of story.

I’m usually a sucker for movies with extended fight scenes – see my review of Haywire. But in Haywire, where the fight scenes seem like tightly focused beams of hurt, the many, many fight scenes of The Raid seem akin to fireworks. At first they’re awesome but after a while it becomes background noise.

Don’t get me wrong; the fights in The Raid were all well choreographed, extremely violent and exciting – in fact some of them were the best scenes of that type I’ve ever seen committed to film. But, by the end of The Raid I was suffering from some serious “fight fatigue” and was ready for all the punching to be over.

Disaster Du Jour #2: Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)

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There are some disaster movies that are obviously disaster movies like Earthquake and The Day After Tomorrow, but there are also some disaster movies that don’t seem like disaster movies but actually are like the movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011).

A sort of a sort of reboot to/origin of the 1960s-70s Planet of the Apes films, Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Rise) chronicles the beginning of the end of the dominance of mankind the the start of the dominance of the “apekind” over the Earth.

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