Battle Royale
Director: Kinji Fukasaku
Actors: Tatsuya Fujiwara, Aki Maeda, Chiaki Kuriyama
Year Released: 2000
Genre: Action
See Also: Sukebandeka The Movie, Battles Without Honor and Humanity
The premise is devastatingly simple: high school students are taken to a deserted island, given weapons, and forced to kill each other. There are a lot of different ways a movie like this could go. In the wrong hands, it could be unforgiveably melodramatic. We can all admit it—Japanese movies can be a tad over-the-top, and this just screams "operatic." But Battle Royale, the Lord of the Flies-like film that bears this premise, is anything but melodramatic, and that's because Kinji Fukasaku was at the helm.
Fukasaku is the man behind the Battles Without Honor and Humanity movies, that gritty yakuza series that forever changed Japanese cinema. They were angry, defiant and completely violent films, hard-core statements about post-war Japan and its loss of honor. Battle Royale, while not as obviously outraged as Fukasaku's earlier films, still has more of an agenda than just violence for violence's sake. There's some definite social commentary going on here.
In the film, the educational system is failing. Students are boycotting school, so the government passes the "BR" act, which allows them to take one high school class each year to an island and make them kill each other. To prevent them from mutinying, each student is fitted with a collar that not only tracks their movements but can be triggered to explode if the student tries to escape. If there is no winner after three days, all the collars go off simultaneously. Ingenious. Dastardly. Totally entertaining.
What makes Battle Royale so watchable is the combination of extreme violence and realistic teenage characters. Shuya (heart throb Tatsuya Fujiwara) and Noriko (Aki Maeda) may be our stars but they're just two of an entire class of hormone-addled, crushed out kids all seemingly in love with each other. Who are, of course, now armed to the teeth. Some refuse to fight, and kill themselves. Some throw themselves into it like any other school activity. And some, well, some are just sadistic. The characters react to the killings as real kids would, not like action heroes, and that believability drives the film.
You'd never know Fukasaku was 70 years old when he made Battle Royale. The camera never flinches from the gore, of which there is plenty, and the film barrels along like a high school track team in the state finals. By the time you've managed to catch your breath the body count is already into the double digits. Fukasaku has wisely soundtracked the film with classical music rather than teen pop. That, and the school uniforms the kids wear, prevents the film from being immediately identified as being from any specific year. It is, in effect, timeless.
Otaku Alert: Looks like the people that brought you The Fast And The Furious will be remaking Battle Royale for America. Maybe now the original will finally get a US release.
Availability Note: Import only, though readily available region-free on the Internet and at specialty shops.
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