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
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
posted by Cbake at 4:11 PM
1 Comments:
As a filmmaker, what are your views on porn? Maybe a post on the subject.
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