I remember when I watched this movie at the theatre in 1997. It was unlike any movie I had ever seen... dismemberment, blood & guts all over the place. But it was all in context. Verhoeven really had a way with deceptively smart satire and this movie is full of it (all the school children stomping on cockroaches saying "I'm doing my part").
This is a Paul Verhoeven masterpiece. Probably the most watched movie in my collection (right up there with RoboCop).
Absolutely NO similarities with Robert A. Heinlein's controversial Hugo Award-winning bestselling book of the same name. I loved the book and I loved the movie. And both for very different reasons!