Battle Royale - Batoru rowaiaru (2000)
September 10th 2008 04:58
Could you kill your best friend?
I've been hearing people talk about Battle Royale for some time now and how great it is. I had it confused with another movie for some reason and thought it was about the mafia. I kept wondering why everyone thought a mafia movie was so great and decided to check it out for myself.
Surprise it had nothing to do with the mafia. For those of you who haven't heard of it before, it is a Japanese language movie with English subtitles about a bunch of teens having to fight to the death. Ok thats simplifying it a bit but thats pretty much what it's about.
It's supposed to take place in the future when Japan is falling apart. There is high unemployment and a distrust or fear of the youth so the The Battle Royale act in created.
For those of you that consider Battle Royale to be one of the best movies ever, this is a warning that I'm about to start picking on it. For one thing why was the act created? Through the whole movie I never did see or understand what it accomplished.
Oh I guess I better explain what the BR Act is before I start questioning it. One class is chosen each year to play Battle Royale. The 'game' consists of an entire class being taken to an island where each student receives a backpack with food, water, and a weapon. They have to kill off each other until only one person is left, then that person 'wins' and gets to go home. Each of them are fitted with a collar that will explode if they try to remove it or at the whim of the person running the game. They have 3 days to do this in and if more than one person is left standing after 3 days, then all the collars explode killing everyone and no one wins.
Back to my nitpicking. What was this act supposed to do? Was it supposed to be entertainment for the disillusioned country like the game in 'The Running Man'? But as far as I could tell it wasn't televised in any way so that couldn't be it. Was it supposed to be a deterrent to other classes of teens? The students picked had never heard of it before so it couldn't have been that. Was is to let the rest of society think that the youth were being dealt with and they were no longer a threat? Hmmm lets see, letting kids fight to the death and the winner is the one to survive and obviously had to kill to do so. So now you have someone experienced in killing and is being called a winner....great way to keep the youth in check.
Ok, now ignoring all that, it wasn't a bad movie, it wasn't a great one, but it wasn't too bad. It had some interesting twists here and there and actually made you like and dislike certain kids. I'd say it's worth watching if your into gory foreign films about teens fighting to the death, and don't mind subtitles.
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