Battle Royale AKA Batoru rowaiaru [2000]

June 21, 2010

When I read that this movie is one of the Quentin Tarantino’s favorites I had to see it. And what can a man expect from Japanese film makers than this bloody mess. Set in the future, this movie provides us with some rather unorthodox decisions of the government. In this case government kidnapped an entire high school class, transported it to a remote island where they will fight each other until there is only one left. This is all because adults lost their trust in the youth of the nation, and eventually started to fear young people. I can see where are they going with this and the concept is pretty standard issue when it comes to these types of movies. The eternal clash between young and old, the envy and hatred that the elders are feeling towards the rebellious youth is actually a representation of real problems that exist in Japan’s society. And in any society, for that matter, I mean this is a universal thing. They just combined that element with manga, hentai and violence and Bob’s your uncle (there’s a rhino loose in the city).

This is so perfectly suited with the dissociative Japanese youth and their weird fixation with murder, girls in school uniforms and violence. The movie has an intro of about 5 minutes and after that the mayhem begins. Each of the contenders was given a bag containing food and different weapons, so this ensures that every kill scene is different and creative… Apart from the constant murders, we see that relationships are formed and each character gets their back-story, still this is second to the killings. There are some rumors that there is going to be an American remake of this movie but so far this is not confirmed. Enjoy…