Battle Royale

Last updated: 2010-03-10 00:03:57 by Mattsuzaka

I had read the book and most of the manga of the same name, and I thought that it would be interesting to see the movie, because I had heard a lot of good things about it. Keep in mind that I did read the book before the movie, and I was a little disappointed that the book was way better than the movie. But that's the way it is with most movies, so anyway, right to the review.

Battle Royale is a Japanese film that takes place in - good guess - Japan. The government is really quite corrupt, and although there isn't much reference to it in the movie, the government tries to ban things like rock and roll music and other things that might set the people up to overthrow the government. The government schedules annual "games" for a school picked by a lottery, where a certain class must fight each other on a deserted island, killing each of their classmates off until there is only one winner. They do this to limit the population and to control the children, because the adults are paranoid that the children make fun of the adults and are unruly.

Enter Shuya Nanahara, a (9th-grade?) boy who goes on a school trip with his classmates only to discover himself fighting for his life alongside Noriko, a girl who has had her eye on Shuya for some time. I had heard that this movie was controversial, in that it had students killing each other. As I viewed it, I didn't find it very controversial at all. For one thing, the students look older than they're supposed to be portraying, so it was almost the same thing as watching teenage kids being killed off in a slasher movie. However, one thing did bother me. What if not being bothered by these kids killing each other really is a point now? With all of these school shootings, kids killing each other all the time, it's scary that we are no longer affected by this type of thing.

Anyway, I was impressed with how entertaining the movie was. Did I want to see some schoolchildren go down in impressive bouts of fighting, shootouts, and some creative weapons? I sure did, and the book set me up for that. But the special effects in the movie seem pretty primitive, and they don't look all that spectacular. There aren't too many creative deaths, either. Everything happens much too quickly, as well. After the first half hour of the movie, we've already seen 20 students knocked off. Now, you'd think this would be a good thing, right? I mean we jump right into the action. It is a good thing, for a while, being that we're totally submersed. Right from the beginning we get a knife chucked into a girl's head, a boy who is blown up with a neck-bomb, a girl who gets shot through the head with an arrow, and a guy who gets an arrow in the stomach. But do we really see much? Nah, not really. A lot of the kills happen so fast there's not even any recognition of suspense. I sat there and said, "Oh, some more died," but I didn't really care who they were.

That's another problem I had with the film. I understand that everything had to happen quickly, what with a substantial running time already and 40 students to kill. I appreciate that. But honestly, I cared nothing about anyone besides Shuya and Noriko, and even my respect for them was limited. When there are 40 students around being killed, and the camera shifts to their deaths, there isn't really any time to make a bond with those kids before they're either killed, or the camera jumps to something else happening at the same time. There is a little bit of backstory that happens, with strange text that just appears on a black screen for a second, but other than that, we don't know much about most of the students, nor do we care. If they were going for this theme, that's fine, but I had the feeling we were supposed to care when the more affectionate, good people died, and it just didn't happen.

Now all of the criticisms I have mentioned do detract from the movie a bit. And part of it could be that I already knew what was going to happen because I read the book. But I was just expecting to be shocked by this movie, and except for a couple of violent scenes, this movie could have been a PG-13 action movie. It was entertaining, but it didn't leave me wanting more, or wanting to watch it again. If you really want to experience the psychologically-afflicting story like it was supposed to be, read the book.