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Plot?
Japanese kids have become massively deliquent, stabbing teachers if they bother to go at all and things are generally terrible.
So the government passes the Battle Royale Act.
Which states that once a year, a class of kids shall be taken to an un-named island and given weapons.
The task?
To kill each other until only 1 is left, who will then be used as an example of what happens if you are not productive in society.
They all have collars which explode if they are still in a "danger area". Not lovely head explosions, but severed throat arteries and sprays of blood.
As demonstrated by Kitano the teacher to an unruly kid at the start.
That's the plot.
But, like L'Haine, this functions on so many other levels.
It's a condemnation of today's youth behaviour, but also a criticism of adults that would rather destroy the problem than try to treat it.
Just...so many different views here.
And it's nasty.
Not exploitative nasty, but realistic nasty.
Kids get shot and they bleed and scream.
These kids are terrified at what they have to do.
They're all given a bag with a map, some water and bread and a weapon.
Some of the weapons are useful, crossbows, uzis, pistols etc but to "keep things fair", some pupils open their bags to find saucepan lids, binocoulars, boxing gloves etc.
Some form alliances, some kill themselves rather than partake and others gleefully descend into absolute savagery.
It's Lord of The Flies meets Clockwork Orange is the best way to describe this.
And the fact it's subtitled takes nothing away from it, you don't need subtitles to understand these kids are terrified and confused and angry and, sometimes, murderous.
Beat Takeshi rules this movie as the cynical, psychopathic teacher that is initially stabbed and takes great pleasure in demonstrating the neck-collars to the perpetrator of his stabbing.
Or haranging the kids through a megaphone system all over the island, "Only 2 died this morning, you're slacking off. I'm disgusted with you."
Absolute class movie.
Ignore the hype, and don't watch this if you're after a schlocky teen-slasher movie because you'll be disappointed.
But if you want something genuinely daring and risky, then buy Battle Royale.
You won't be found wanting.
That ginger kid is mental.
--
He's the sort of kid that really, really shouldn't be allowed to watch Battle Royale, even though he's in it.
If you get my drift.
"he volunteered"
????? Pyscho.
I loved Beat Takeshi, if you haven't seen his other stuff, check out "Violent Cop" and "Sonantine".
They're quality.
This guy is uber-cool. Like an Oriental Harvey Keitel (but with his clothes on) from Reservoir Dogs in both those films.
I like his movies, they're Japanese but not poncy arthouse beard stroky stuff that pretentious mumblies watch and then go "Yes, the classical Japanese cinema verite with a heavy social documentation to them...."
Some people just need to watch a foreign film and love it because it's a top film, but because mates think they're cool for being different.
Sorry, just spoke to a mate that thinks he's best cos he watches obscure Polish crap and thinks he's Barry Norman.
But yeah, it's cool. That ginger kid is mental.
I have made a new resolution though, to stop lookin so much into films. And why you might ask, well I saw Mulholland Drive last night and my brain hurts.
I didn't realise quite how good it was until I watched Apocalypse Now Redux straight after. MD made Apocalypse Now seem distinctly average when it is a brilliant film. I've never felt a collective air of WTF?! before, but coming out of the cinema after Mulholland Drive you could feel a mass sense of "wow, that was good but what the hell did I just see?". People waiting to go into Apocalypse were looking at the MD people and wandering why they looked so dazed and confused. Incredible. Normally I would try and write a review of the film but in this case I don't know where to start or where to end or who to turn into in the last 30 minutes... Only one thing is certain after watching that film, the incompetent hitman is a legend.
Kinji Fukasaki deliberate exaggerates
> a topical issue in Japan to highlight the problems. Clearly Battle Royale is an
> utterly unthinkable
V
V
V
at least she tries to understand both sides.
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So you liked it then?
You sound like my old media lecturer dude...not a bad thing I suppose.
Intricate study of the decline of morality set within an intermekmra.a......it's a cool film.
One of those that just rocks.
Just look at the Exorcist, which had people throwing up in the cinemas, and running out screaming... People were laughing at it when I saw it, including me
Made a post about it a month or so back. Thus the "." on your title I guess!
After initially sounding really sick I watched it.
Though it still is quite a disturbing film, it is REALLY good! Dunno what it is about this film, I guess it the fact that it's a film you thought they'd never make, let alone release. Thus they didn't in the UK (well apart from at my uni cinema)! Only the Japanese could get away with a film of this type. But if you ever get the chance to watch it DO! It's GREAT! Well the ending is pretty confusing but I won't go into that....
:)
Having said that, I don't want to detract from Battle Royale because I was blown away by it. Takeshi is brilliant, I know absolutely no Japanese but the intonation in his voice suggests that he is, well, bored or unfulfilled by the carnage. He doesn't sound like a psychopath, but a well-mannered school teacher, and that's one of the film's many points. If you let people take revenge for crimes perpetrated against them to the full, then absolute carnage ensues. You really begin to question who really needs to be taught a lesson, the adults or the children. The fact that adults create something so horrific perhaps shows why the children are so problematic: role models and so on.
Kinji Fukasaki deliberate exaggerates a topical issue in Japan to highlight the problems. Clearly Battle Royale is an utterly unthinkable and unrealistic situation but it's only at extremes like that when problems are really exposed. If a Japanese minister watched that film (let's face it, if the French cabinet called an emergency session to watch La Haine, then the Japanese Government certainly watched Battle Royale) and then criticised it, he's missed the point. Fukasaki shows the division between adults and children, neither of whom understand each other, and says that if the government continues to persecute children in order to control them, it will only worsen the situation. The only hope seems to be if adults and children try to bridge the ever-widening gap between them. That is why the film focuses on one girl in particular, who both talks to her teacher and hides the knife of the boy who stabbed him; at least she tries to understand both sides.