This post is a part of an ongoing project in which I watch one movie from a different country every other week.
PLOT: In the future, the Japanese government captures a class of ninth-grade students and forces them to kill each other under the revolutionary “Battle Royale” act. – IMDB
MEMORABLE MOMENT: Toward the middle of the movie, a group of girls have holed up inside the island’s lighthouse. Everything is going surprisingly well. Despite the government’s threats, they haven’t harmed one another. There is even a chance they might figure out a way off the island.
HOWEVER, one of the girls is suspicious of an injured boy they have taken in. She poisons his food, but one of the other girls eats it and dies. All the girls blame each other. Within seconds their community falls into chaos. The girls shoot one another, leaving only the initial murderer alive. Traumatized, she stares at her dead and dying friends. Before collapsing, one of them laments that they are idiots because they might have all survived.
This scene has haunted me since the first time I saw Battle Royal years ago.
IDEAL AUDIENCE: Several months ago I wrote a post on The Hunger Games for my Sci-fi/Fantasy Masters series. In it, I stated that I often roll my eyes at people who claim Suzanne Collins stole her trilogy’s plot from this movie. The two works only share superficial similarities, and Collins may have very well never heard of this film before writing her books.
That being said, while I did enjoy The Hunger Games, neither those books nor their film adaptations ever reach the sheer brutality or sick entertainment value of Battle Royal. This is a film for people with iron clad stomachs. The plot alone is enough to put off many film goers (and if you never watch it, I can’t blame you. It isn’t for everyone). The filmmakers take the unsettling concept of a government forcing children to fight to the death and takes it even further than you think they will.
But what makes this movie so unsettling is how good it is. Not only is it just as thrilling as it is unsettling, it’s often very moving and occasionally even funny (Don’t believe me? Watch the scene where the students are shown the cheesy introduction video welcoming them to the island).
The film is bursting with likable, complex characters. Several of them only appear in a few scenes but still manage to convey distinct personalities. While there are a few psychos in the bunch most of the children are just normal everyday kids who were living mundane lives before they were kidnapped by the government. Had the characters been cardboard high school stereotypes out of a 90’s slasher sequel, I would have forgotten about this movie years ago. What really lingers with the audience isn’t the bloody violence, it’s the characters who are affected by that violence.
WHERE CAN YOU FIND IT?: Battle Royal is available on Netflix Instant. It is also available through Amazon to rent ($2.99) or buy ($7.99).
RUNTIME: 114 Minutes
DIRECTOR: Kinji Fukasaku
WRITER: Kenta Fukasaku
Koushun Takami (Novel)
STARING:
