Movie Reviews: "Battle Royale" with BONUS "Tokyo Gore Police"!

"Battle Royale", Japanese, dir. Kinji Fukasaku (2001)
So after I returned "Infernal Affairs" and "Kwaidan", I walked into VisArt unsure of what to get next. I went back to the Asian film section and slowly glanced around, hoping something would jump out at me. Park Chan-Wook's "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance" and "Lady Vengeance" were nowhere to be seen. The Miike section was empty of any films I had heard of. Kurosawa I'm saving for later.

And then BAM, it hit me. An ordinary, unassuming cardboard colored box with a symbol, the letters "BR" surrounded by an olive branch, stamped upon it. "BATTLE ROYALE". My hand shot out and snatched the box off the shelf. "BATTLE ROYALE". I've been waiting to see this movie for nine years, and finally, I had it in my hands.

A little background on the Japanese film and why its taken me nine years to watch it. I first saw a trailer on the internet for "Battle Royale" when I was a freshman in college. It promised a violent film about high schoolers who are sent to an island to kill each other until one is left standing. This was hot on the heels of the Columbine incident, which was still fresh in Americans' minds, and so it is of no surprise that the movie never found a distributor here in the states, not even for a DVD release. And so, after a few years, I had forgotten about it. It never came out in theaters, I couldn't go buy it (and didn't try to online, assuming there was no Region 1 release for it), and it would never come on television. So when I saw it sitting on the shelf, I had to see it, because I've been anticipating it for close to a decade, as strange as that sounds to my young ears.

As I said before, "Battle Royale" is a violent film. It takes place in a not-to-distant future Japan where a terrible economy has caused record numbers of unemployment and has made the Japanese youth apathetic, disrespectful, and unruly. To combat this, and to show the young people that adults are still in charge, the government creates the Battle Royale program, where one class from among all the schools in Japan is chosen by lottery to participate.

This particularly not-so-lucky class thinks they are going on a field trip, but as they drive down the highway, they pass masked military men, and soon they are all gassed and knocked out. When they awake, they are in a derelict classroom and surrounded by soldiers. Their old teacher, Kitano (played by Beat Takeshi Kitano, who most American audiences will know as one of the co-hosts of Spike TV's "Most Extreme Elimination Challenge {MXC}"), who quit his job after one of the students stabbed him, shows up and reveals himself to be the man in charge. While the confused students demand answers, Kitano plays for them a humorous video that explains their situation.

Hosted by a cute Japanese girl dressed in a ridiculous outfit, she describes how the "game" is played through her cutesy sing-song voice. She tells them that they are on an island whose inhabitants have been evacuated. Each student will receive one bag that has some bread and water, a map of the Island, a flashlight, and one weapon. Every bag is different, so while some lucky students may get a knife, a sword, or even a gun, some unfortunate kids may receive binoculars or even a pot lid as a weapon.

And oh yeah, every student has been fitted with a metal collar. Once they learn that they are being made to kill each other, they erupt in anger. One particular student, the one who stabbed Kitano in school, rages against the teacher, and Kitano pulls out a remote and presses a button. Suddenly, the student's collar starts beeping, and he frantically darts about the room pleading with his friends for help, who all try to get as far away from his as possible. When the beeping stops, the collar explodes, blowing out his throat and causing blood to spray everywhere.

If, after three days, there is not one student remaining, if they try to protest and refuse to kill each other, then everyone's collars will explode. Each student is called forth one by one, given a pack, and pushed out of the building and into the wilderness. And so the "game" begins.

Its an interesting premise to be sure. What I most enjoyed about this film were the questions it brings up, particularly in the realm of "what would I do", and the filmmakers present almost every option. Would I refuse to fight? Would I commit suicide with my girlfriend, being unwilling to kill my friends or force them to kill me? Would I be a loner, shunning my friends, telling them to run far away so that we wouldn't have to confront each other? Would we band together? Could we trust each other?

Could you? It seems the level of trust between you and your friends would only be as strong as the weakest person. The weakest person would be the most scared and therefore would be the riskiest member, the one who, afraid we might turn on him or her, would act in self-defense and shoot us first. Its a very scary premise, and it had me thinking throughout the film about my own senior class, deciding which groups and cliques would stay together, and which ones would kill each other due to infighting.

High school is rife with backstabbing, double-crossing, hormone-driven, emotional creatures that don't hesitate to get what they want. The school slut might have stolen one girl's boyfriend in the past; you can bet that animosity will come to play when both girls are armed with weapons. That quiet, loner whom you suspected had sadistic tendencies might turn out to be a merciless killer. Or, he could be an empathetic hero. Its full of possibility, and I was fascinated, riveted with the story and wondering how it would play out.

It plays out as an ensemble film with a focus on a couple that has yet to express their true feelings for each other, but the film goes to different parts of the island to see how the different groups or individuals are handling their new situation. Often, we are shown flashbacks of the characters to see what their life was like before the Battle Royale, to see how their relationships were before they were forced to kill each other, to understand why this person acts the way she does, be it childhood trauma or a sour experience in school.

I particularly enjoyed one character who, with his friends, attempts to hack into the computer system that monitors and controls their electronic collars. He takes inspiration from his uncle, an outspoken, rebellious critic of authority and government, and he sees this as their chance to fight for freedom, to take up the cause and strike back. He sends his friends out for materials that will give them enough explosives to blow up the school. How's *that* for a metaphor.

As the body count rises and the number of students dwindle, we come to an ending that, for me, didn't make much sense upon first viewing. The teacher, Kitano, is given a few scenes that make him downright sympathetic in the end, but his final scene is so bizarre that I'm still not sure what to make of it. But its far from a dealbreaker; it just strains believability by just a hair.

"Battle Royale" isn't the violent bloodbath you might expect (much of the bloodletting is due to gunfire and the majority of it is computer-generated), and its a shame that the stain of Columbine prevents this fine example of satiric filmmaking from being released to a wider, American audience. I hear there have been rumblings of an American remake, and I pray they do it right. As the film finished, I started thinking of how I would remake the film, and I would relish the opportunity to be a part of it. The premise is rich with potential to explore angsty teenage school life, America's obsession with violence, and reality tv culture. God, I wish I could be a part of it.


*BONUS REVIEW!!!*

"Tokyo Gore Police", Japanese, dir. Yoshihiro Nishimura (2008)

The day after I watched "Battle Royale", my girlfriend and I drove up to Chapel HIll for the weekend to watch her brother graduate from college. We stayed with friends, and I noticed that the boyfriend had "Tokyo Gore Police", a weird film I had heard much about on movie websites throughout the year. I didn't know it had been released on DVD already in the states, so he and I sat down to watch it that night while the girls stepped out.

Uhm. Three words. What. The. F#$%.

--Cbake

Wait Wait Wait, a Topless Miss California Gets to Keep Her Crown?

So, let's get the facts straight here:

1. Miss California, Carrie Prejean, SIGNS a CONTRACT with the pageant saying "I've never posed for nude pictures".

2. Within the past two weeks, a photo popped up from her early modeling career in which Prejean was topless, though no breasts or nipples were shown. Still, she was topless, thus violating the contract and making Preajean a liar.

3. Prejean says "That's the only one," adamantly stating this was the only time she ever posed topless.

4. One day later, another photo from the same shoot, Prejean still topless, surfaces online.

5. People say she's being unfairly attacked for her anti-gay marriage views.

6. Yesterday, MORE pictures from her modeling career surface, these taken only within the past YEAR.

7. Said pictures actually show Prejean with breasts and nipples exposed. Even though she is technically wearing a top, a full breast and nipple has to be edited out when shown by mainstream media.

This effectively makes Carrie Preajean a LIAR twice over. One, she lied to the pageant when she signed a contract saying she had never posed topless or nude (both of which she had done). Two, after the first pictures surfaced, she said those were the only ones, that was the only time she did it.

And yet these new pictures definitely show her partially nude. There is no getting around it, but she is trying, claiming it was "a windy day" and her top somehow blew off her breast.

Give me a f**king break. What really pisses me off, however, is that Donald Trump, who heads the pageant, has decided to KEEP Miss California and will NOT revoke her crown. This is a girl who has posed nude and lied about it to the pageant AND to the public, and yet Trump is basically saying "Hey, that's okay!"

Yeah, GREAT role model you've got there, Donald. I'm calling bulls**t.

--Cbake

Movie Reviews: "Infernal Affairs" and "Kwaidan"

This past week I watched two more foreign films from Asia, Hong Kong's crime drama "Infernal Affairs" and Japan's ghost-story anthology "Kwaidan".

"Infernal Affairs" (2002) tells the story of two intertwined characters: one, a cop who has been working undercover as a thug in the local crime gangs for ten years, the other, a criminal working as a mole in the police department for the local gang boss. If this story sounds familiar, it should. Martin Scorsese's Oscar-winning film "The Departed" (2007) was a remake of this movie.

It was interesting to watch the original film and see where William Monahan, screenwriter of "The Departed", deviated and where he stayed faithful. Surprisingly, one of the bigger set pieces from "The Departed", a scene where the mob engages in a drug deal with a rival gang while being watched and monitored by the police, occurs extremely early in "Infernal Affairs", I believe within the first act. It is here that both sides, criminal and police, realize they have a mole in their outfit, as both detectives try to alert their side to what's happening.

Other than this reshuffling of events, the film remains very similar to Scorsese's, including the deaths of the two father figures (criminal and moral), and the way in which both detectives realize the identities of their spy-counterpart.

The biggest difference between the films is the handling of the corrupt detective, Det. Lau in "Affairs", Colin (Matt Damon) in "Departed". In "Affairs", there is a very distinct conflict raging within Lau as he wrestles with his duty to Boss Sam and his increasing desire to be a "good guy". In "Departed", I never once thought that Damon's character wished to be a normal detective, fighting crime. In both cases, the character receives a promotion and is in the process of moving into a new place with his beautiful girlfriend.

Certainly this weighs heavily on both characters' minds, but in "Departed", Damon makes his decision to cut ties with his former gang as a result of a revelation and a betrayal. It feels like an emotional reaction to bad news rather than a thoughtful and debated conclusion. In "Affairs", Lau makes the decision because he has chosen to be the "good guy" (his girlfriend, a writer, has been struggling with a new character in her book, trying to decide which side of the moral spectrum he falls into) and he wants to put his criminal past behind him.

This is a huge difference between the films. Both deal with the nature of morality and show how easy it is to blur the line between good and evil, cop and criminal. But while the good detective character (DiCaprio, Tony Leung) remains a hero in both movies, never going over to the Dark Side, "Affairs" treats the bad detective differently than "The Departed" does, giving him an air of tragedy.

The final sequence is much different than in "The Departed" (surprisingly so), and the closing shot left me feeling quite sad, whereas the final scene of "The Departed" was cathartic and left me feeling vindicated. In both films the obvious villains are the criminals, but only in "The Departed" is the mole-detective treated as such. I hated Matt Damon's character. He was a real asshole. I definitely could not say the same about Detective Lau in "Affairs".

Another large difference is the way in which the deaths are treated in this film. After a major character is killed, the film usually flashes back to moments of that character's life (in black and white) and is accompanied by a somber voiced female singing a song of woe. Western audiences might find this to be cheesy, but this could be typical of Hong Kong dramatic filmmaking. "Infernal Affairs" is still a good, taught drama, and I recommend it for fans of "The Departed" and anyone who enjoys a good crime yarn.

"Kwaidan" (1964) is a ghost-story anthology told in four parts. Indeed, the word "kwaidan" means "ghost story" in the broadest sense, but deeming a tale as such gives it an old-fashioned connotation of belonging to an older period of Japan's history (and separates it from newer Japanese horror like "The Ring" and "Ju-On"). So it is of no surprise that none of the four stories take place in contemporary Japan. The film is based on Lafcadio Hearn's collection of Japanese folk-tales, known as "Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things", and the four stories taken from his tome are as follows:

The Black Hair
The story of a poor samurai who leaves his loving wife for a marriage of convenience and social mobility elsewhere. After years of an unhappy (yet socially and monetarily profitable) marriage, he begins to miss his former wife and true love, and regrets his decision. The samurai sets out for his old home, but what he finds there will shock and horrify him.

The Woman of the Snow
The story of a woodsman and his apprentice who get lost in a snowstorm and are visited by a snow-demon or snow-vampire; a beautifully pale woman dressed all in white. She kills the elderly woodsman, blowing her icy breath into his body and stealing away his blood. She permits the apprentice to live under the condition that he promise to never tell anyone what happened that night, and if he does, she will return to kill him. The apprentice goes back to town and lives his life, soon gaining a young wife and children. Years later, however, he feels the urge to discuss the event with his wife, which may lead to disastrous results

Hoichi, the Earless
The story of a blind musician living at a monastery who can masterfully sing The Tale of the Heike that retells the Battle of Dan-no-ura, an epic sea-battle between the rival gangs of the Genji and the Heike. The monastery sits near the cliffs of that ancient battle, an area that is said to be haunted by all those who lost their lives during the war. One night he is visited by a mysterious stranger, beckoning him to come and sing for his master. As he is blind, Hoichi does not realize this is the ghost of one of the Heike samurai. After a few nights of stealing away to play for his new masters, his curious co-workers at the monastery follow him. They find him singing in a graveyard to a bunch of tombstones, so they drag him back to the priest, thinking him bewitched.

The priest determines that another night singing to the ghosts will put Hoichi permanently under their spell- and they'll "tear him to pieces", so the priest, in a very memorable moment, paints holy words and texts over every inch of Hoichi's body. This will render the musician invisible when the ghost returns. Unfortunately, the priest forgets to paint Hoichi's ears, and based on the title of the story, you may be able to figure out what happens next. The samurai, after all, must provide proof to his master that he attempted to find Hoichi, and only being able to see the musician's ears, he decides to take those back with him...

In a Cup of Tea
In what may be one of the coolest ideas, but also the shortest and most incomplete story, "In a Cup of Tea" is about a rule-breaking samurai who, when filling his bowl with refreshing tea, sees the image of a pale, smiling man reflected back at him. Dumping the tea, refilling it, and breaking the bowl brings no change- the creepily smiling man gets closer and closer, until soon his entire face fills the bowl. The angry and thirsty samurai finally disregards this ghostly image and drinks.

That night while on patrol in his master's house, he is visited by the smiling man who says the samurai attempted to wrong him earlier in the day (presumably by drinking the tea he was reflected in). The short-tempered samurai will have none of this and attacks the ghost, stabbing him in the shoulder and causing him to disappear. Later, three brightly colored ghosts appear and announce themselves as the smiling man's servants. They say the samurai has injured him, and in a few days they will return to deal with the samurai.

Again, the samurai basically says "Screw you" and attacks the apparitions, but through some clever camera-work and editing, the servants all disappear before they can be run through by the samurai's spear. Eventually, he is able to wound all of them, and they each disappear, but before he can celebrate they reappear unscathed. This causes the samurai to start laughing like a madman, the last desperate outburst of a man on the edge.

This story is actually a story within a story, and it is bookended by scenes of a man inspecting a writer's house, searching for him as he has disappeared. The man reads his new story (which is the ghost tale we have just witnessed). It has no ending (the writer mentioning in his notes he couldn't find one suitable enough), and as the man goes for a drink of tea, he is horrified to find the writer's image smiling back at him through the reflection.

"Kwaidan" was directed by Masaki Kobayashi, who gave the film a very artful look. Most outdoor scenes were shot in sound-stages, allowing for great control over color in the background. "The Woman of the Snow" features some beautiful sets, including painted backgrounds featuring giant, creepy eyes that represent the snow-witch while also looking like natural formations. Kobayshi transforms the mood of a scene instantly by changing the lights from warm yellows to cold, icy blues within the same shot.

The Battle of Dan-no-ura in the Hoichi tale features bright oranges and yellows and incorporates a massive amount of dry-ice created fog to give the set a beautiful, yet spooky look. In one sequence, as Hoichi's friends look for him, they find floating balls of fire, a brilliant effect that is later repeated as the graveyard Hoichi sang in is once again transformed into the ghostly temple he thought he was performing in. The balls of fire float and dance all across the set, and nary a wire is to be seen guiding them. Its an effect I hope to emulate one day.

Kobayshi also uses some interesting camerawork, especially in "The Black Hair" (a tale that may have influenced the spooky, long black hair-obsessed stories of "The Ring" and "Ju-On" aka "The Grudge"). In this story, once the samurai is driven mad and starts running through his derelict house, Kobayashi slowly dollies the camera after the samurai and, within the same shot, turns it into a canted Dutch angle to represent the descent into madness. It makes for a beautiful shot that I rewound to watch again and again.

In fact, a case could be made for Kobayshi using each story to focus on a particular aspect of filmmaking. "The Black Hair" featured some interesting camerawork, "The Woman of the Snow" some brilliant set design and lighting, "Hoichi, the Earless" special effects, and "In a Cup of Tea" editing.

"Kwaidan" was a very enjoyable film, though at times it did feel long, as none of the stories are particularly exciting. The music is extremely spartan, popping up only every once in awhile as the sound of a traditional instrument being played loudly for a brief moment, used to heighten our awareness of what's occurring in a scene. But it was a beautiful film for the most part, and I'd gladly watch it again, as I feel there is much to be learned from Kobayashi's style of filmmaking and his ability to create mood.

Well that's all for now. Next week the Asian Film Fest continues with a look at the banned-in-the United States kids-with-guns flick, "Battle Royale".

--Cbake