Battle Royal

This is a movie that I have been wanting to see for some time now, I have heard a lot about it on the net on places like the CHUD boards and was really looking forward to it. For those of you that don’t know it is a Japanese movie about…well. Every year one Japanese high school class is selected at random and is taken to an island where they are forced to fight to the death till there is only one left, that person wins the Battle Royal and is allowed to live, all of this because kids have become disrespectful. So as you can see this movie would never be made here in America.

I’m going to go a little reverse here and just say right now that I liked this movie. Now I had so much build-up to it that it didn’t shock me as much as it could have, I didn’t find it that disturbing at all because I suppose I already knew about it but it still managed to keep me rapt at attention. From the moment that they get to the island you know that your in for a treat, especially when you see the instructional video. I laughed my ass off at that damn video, to me it was one of the better parts of the movie the person is just so damn happy and animated like some type of Japanese game show and the seriousness in which the instructor watches it just fantastic. Each of the kids reacts differently to the circumstances, each reaction seems like it could be real. The really scared ones trying to win, the ruthless ones, those who refuse to play, the loose affiliated groups, and the couples all add up and give the movie an emotional core that may even have you thinking “what if my HS class had been selected?”. There is one character in this movie who every second that he is on screen just reminds me of The Deerhunter now it could just be his bandanna but I think it is more than that, the lighting on him at times and the smoking just seem to somehow connect to that movie. . Takeshi Kitano plays the instructor it is the type of role that I’ve seen him in a few times now, it is just a certain attitude that I don’t know he just does very well a certain understated insanity that borders on being a sociopath it’s creepy and authoritative at the same time. The rest of the cast I don’t really know because I don’t watch that many Japanese films but they do an excellent job conveying the fear, suspicion and outrage that is called for in this movie, so basically a very well casted movie.

I give you Battle Royal B+. I couldn’t give this movie an A rank because I don’t think that it will stick with you, you know what I mean? I didn’t find it particularly haunting or mind-blowing, I’d recommend it to friends but I don’t think that it’ll grace my DVD player multiple times in the next few months (True mainly because I don’t own it but that is beside the point), I do think it is rewatchable just not infinitely.