I'm amazed that so many people miss the point !
I'm amazed that so many people can blindly miss the subtleties of this movie. While it works as a brainless, enjoyable gung-ho piece of sci-fi cum war hokum it's also quite a clever piece of satire, taking a pot-shot squarely aimed at the kind of control that governments, regardless of ideology, exert over their populace. While the spoofed propaganda TV commercials most obviously display the parody in this movie, one can also see it littered throughout the movie. The director has chosen to ape Nazism as it's an extreme view of what can happen when a government has a strong grip on its people, because of his childhood experience being under Nazism and because by cloaking the heroes of the movie in Nazism he shows a self-mocking sense of ironic humor.
Like...
Johnny Rico being a blonde, blue-eyed Aryan. While Van Dien's abilities as an actor are frequently ridiculed at there's no doubt that he is perfect for this movie's take on the character. He *looks* like an actor straight...
Need Extended Memory to Load
You must have extended memory loaded to play. All copies are the same, so there is no use exchanging it. I was waiting on my second copy when I found a HD forum talking about the loading problem. The forum members determined the problem is the way the disk was authored. The disk looks for enough memory to support the BD Live content even when BD Live is not enabled. I tried the second copy I received and it would not load either. I updated my firmware and it still would not play. I put a flash drive in my Sony BD S350 and the second copy loaded fine. The bottom line is you need to add extended memory to load this disk, whether your player takes an SD Card, Flash Drive, or whatever.
As far as the movie goes, I would have given it 5 stars if not for this issue with the disk. It's a great action flick with great special effects that look even more awesome on blu-ray. Excellent satire of blind alligence to government and military. I didn't read the book, so I don't have a...
'War makes fascists of us all.'
So says Paul Verhoeven, who has said (and says again in the commentary on this DVD release) that it's one of the statements made by this morally complex film.
I love listening to Verhoeven's commentaries (especially the one he does with Arnold Schwarzenegger on _Total Recall_). Here he shares the task with screenwriter Ed Neumeier, and putting the two of them together was an excellent choice. The commentary is one of the best features of the special edition.
The film itself is hard to evaluate. Because it's Verhoeven, it's got sex, gore, and social satire. What it's also got -- and something that was arguably missing from the Robert A. Heinlein novel on which the film is based -- is a high level of moral complexity that doesn't divide everyone neatly into Good Guys and Bad Guys.
The effect is odd, and oddly disturbing. On one hand, the film succeeds quite well as a combat shoot-'em-up in the style of the great World War II films. At that level, if we...
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