Random Movie Review- #22 "Battle Royale"

Well after this past weekend, I saw a movie which inspired me to bring back a tradition of GeneralPigott.com. I watched the entire Director's Cut of the Japanese blockbuster film "Battle Royale". Not only is this movie already one of my favorite movies of all time, it's quite possibly the best international film ever made, and has had that tag put on it by several American movie critics.

Despite it's predictability and being a bit far-fetched, the directing, acting, and plot of this movie are all incredible. The movie takes place in not to distant futuristic Japan. After a nuclear war, (presumably with the United States) the Japanese economy falls apart and 15% of all of Japan's workforce is left unemployed. As a result, students across the country quickly boycott school, with 800,000 students nationwide boycotting school. Several laws are passed requiring all students to finish the 9th grade. In addition, a law is passed called "The Battle Royale Act", which allows the government every year, by random lottery, to select one 9th grade class to take to a deserted island and have them fight to the death with only the one surviving student being the person allowed to leave and return to their normal life.

Once the students are surprised by their old 7th grade teacher Kitano, they are shown the rules of the game in a rather hilarious video which shows a very beautiful Japanese woman with almost a cartoon character voice going over the rules of the game. The rules, if any are as follows:

• Each person is given a survival pack with water, a map, food, and "female products" for the women.
• Each person is given a weapon pack, with the weapon being completely random. This is done to take away natural advantages that men would have over women, stronger against weaker, etc. The weapons range from machine guns, pistols, crossbows, and axes to pot lids, japanese fans, baseball bats and binoculars.
• Each person is fit with a collar which cannot be removed. It monitors heart rate and is used as a monitoring system for both movement and audio.
• Every 6 hours, the teacher gives and update on who is dead and how many are left, and the "danger zones" that become active every hour. If in any of those danger zones in that hour, your collar will explode and kill you instantly. This is to prevent people from holding up in one place for the entire game.
• The time limit is 3 days. At the end of 3 days, if there is more than one survivor, everyone's collar explodes.

Once the game starts, it is revealed that two new people were brought to the class that day for different reasons. One is a sadistic killer, Kirayama, that signed up just to play the game. Another is a former survivor of the game who is drugged and brought just to even the game up. After faced with the horror that they must kill each other, several students commit suicide. Others form alliances believing that someone will find a way off the island. Others, however, take the game very seriously and kill everyone over typical high school social differences. The three main characters, Nanuhara and Noriko, form an alliance with Kawada (the former survivor) and fend off all of the other students to be the last 3 alive. The 3 of them trick Kitano into thinking that Kawada is the winner and kill Kitano after the island is evacuated by the military guards that were spread throughout the island. After the 3 escape on a boat, Kawada dies from his wounds he suffered fighting the "guy who signed up for fun" as he called it. Nanuhara and Noriko escape to Tokyo and become fugitives from the law.

This film was great because the hero, Nanuhara is so loveable. Being an orphan who's mom ran off and who's dad committed suicide when he was 12, he had already had a tough life. Eventhough Noriko was in love with his best friend, Hiroshi, who was killed by Kitano when he tried to escape, Nanuhara protects her in a "knight in shining armor" type of role, and being a 15 year old actor, it is a very believable role. Along with that, all of the students are actually 9th grade age kids, so it's not like an American movie where you have well known 25 year old actors playing high school kids. The realism of the characters and actors really adds to this movie.

I would suggest anyone that likes a thought provoking international film to check this movie out, but be prepared for some of the most gruesome onscreen fatalities that have ever been captured. Only a couple of times does the camera go away when a student is killed. A little too much blood, but still a great movie.