Spetters

A film that seems to anticipate the amateur dirt bike revolution that would be epitomized by the awesomely bad film Rad, Verhoeven’s Spetters (or, loosely translated, HotShots) chronicles three would-be motorcycle racers as they struggle to use their talents for capitalistic profit. So the film tries to understand why these desires for speed are in place, and within this microcosm the film paints a study of Dutch youth. As long as you a part of the clique, you are lusted after and cared for, but once you fall out of touch with the clique, be it through a racing injury or a sexual difference, you are exiled and abandoned. These ideas are bluntly hammered home in this film, and it is these ideas, not the racing sequences, that linger after the film is finished.

I emphatically wish to highlight the film’s engagement with capitalism, since everything in this film is inherently based around a capitalistic desire. Fientje (Renée Soutendijk), the girl all of the racers lust after, is willing to bed anyone who might offer a promise away from a miserable and miserly life selling junk food at raceways. This economic exchange finally results in her settling for a big dick and a true restaurant she can fashion for himself and her hubby (one of the racers). Likewise, Rien ‘s (Hans van Tongeren) dreams of securing a position in life are based around this same yearning for financial reward, and his fate suffers once he is injured, wherein the ostracization from his group is revealing in its study of camaraderie.

Some of the film’s adolescent humor works, such as the scene in the abandoned building where two couples enact a façade of copulation for the benefit of the others in the next room to underscore how masculine they are. However, this aggressive display of and commitment to conventional masculinity is, in true Verhoeven fashion, subverted by the biker who is secretly gay, yet maintains a bravado of machismo and beats up the town’s homosexuals for their money. His eventual comeuppance is simultaneously haunting and disrespected in the Lynchian way that Verhoeven cuts between glib humor and genuine compassion through the picture (a blueprint that may in fact be Verhoeven’s raison d'être).

The film’s failing are the fact that the racing isn’t really all that exciting now, and the glibness of Verhoeven’s treatment of his characters sometimes subverts the melodrama that he wishes to instill in the film. Still, as an admittedly broad character study, you could do worse.

Spetters: 5.5/10