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Battle
Royale (Director's Cut)
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Review
by
Brian Lindsey
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8
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N/A |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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Based
on the controversial pulp novel by Koushun Takami, Battle
Royale sends a class of 40 Japanese high school students
on the Ultimate Field Trip To Hell. Kidnapped by the army,
they are taken to a small island which has been evacuated of
all inhabitants. In the island's school building the frighteningly
stern Mr. Kitano (actor/director "Beat" Takeshi) explains what
is happening to them. For the next three days the kids will
play "The Game" according to the Battle Royale Millennium Act.
They are to kill each other — by any means available — and there
can be only one survivor. If more than one teen is left alive
at the end of the allotted time, all those remaining
will die. To ensure compliance the kids have each been fitted
with an electronic necklace that will explode if tampered with.
The necklaces contain homing beacons that allow The Game's controllers
to know their exact locations at all times, as well as sensors
transmitting the wearer's vital signs. If someone tries to escape
the island their necklace-bomb will be detonated by remote control.
Every 6 hours a broadcast will be made announcing which students
have been eliminated and which areas of the island are temporarily
off-limits — anyone within such a zone at the wrong time will
get their head blown off. Each student is issued a field kit
containing a map and compass, a flashlight, victuals, and a
randomly chosen weapon at start. Oh, and just to make things
interesting... two older (and sinister) looking "transfer"
students are joining the class for The Game. Okay, then. All
set? Have fun, kids!
With Battle
Royale director
Kinji Fukasaku (The Green Slime)
delivers an exciting, absolutely riveting action thriller that
— as that most clichéd of blurbs goes —
really keeps you on the edge of your seat. It's incredibly slick
and gorgeously photographed, a low budget picture that looks
and flows as good as anything Hollywood could churn out for
many times the cost. The level of gore on display (sometimes
achieved via CG enhancement) is indeed shocking considering
these are teenagers who are the perpetrators and victims.
Structured like the novel, the mayhem is broken up by flashbacks
as we see how the various characters related to each other before
being shanghaied into The Game and the key childhood incidents
that formed their personalities, not always for the better.
Although we're shown the fate of every single teen on the island,
the main focus is on but a handful of them, especially the trio
of Shuya (Tatsuya Fujiwara), a sensitive, goodhearted lad despite
some hard knocks in life; Noriko (Aki Maeda), a 'plain jane'
positively glowing with inner beauty who's secretly carried
a torch for him; and Kawada (Taro Yamamoto), the tough-guy transfer
student with murky motivations and a secret plan to turn The
Game on its head. How the classmates react to the kill-or-be-killed
situation thrust upon them is the core of the film. Alliances
are made though trusting anyone, even a friend, can be
fatal. Some choose defiance while others, unable to bring themselves
to kill, opt for suicide. Still others decide to give The Game
their all, determined to survive. Two of the teens emerge as
scary killing machines —
Mitsuko (Kou Shibasaki), the class 'babe' who'll cut your throat
as soon as smile at you, and Kiriyama (Masanobu Ando), a bona
fide sadist who enjoys the opportunity to murder at will.
The film is quite faithful to the novel,
with a few key exceptions. The plotline concerning computer
wiz Shinji (Takashi Tsukamoto) and his buddies' attempt to build
a bomb with which to attack the school building is substantially
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and thankfully —
streamlined. On the negative side, changes made to the important
character of the instructor, Kitano (called "Sakamochi" in the
book), are significant, impacting the whole rationale for The
Game. In the film, Kitano is an embittered former teacher of
the selected class who'd been attacked by one of the kids some
two years before. He obviously now relishes the chance for payback,
projecting onto the students all the cumulative faults his generation
sees in rebellious, undisciplined teenagers. He also has some
sort of weird fetish for Noriko, one he's obviously harbored
even after quitting as her teacher. The novel is completely
different in this respect. Its BR instructor, Mr. Sakamochi,
is a total stranger to the kids. A ruthless bureaucrat, his
main concern is ensuring the best possible Game to please his
government superiors. Towards the end of the book he also explains
the real rationale behind the BR program —
a point that's never made in the film version. Perhaps
because it is so kinetically gripping many viewers simply get
caught up in the immediacy of the film, forgetting to ask, Why
is this deadly game being held? What possible purpose does it
serve?
That the film leaves the "why" an
unanswered question has resulted in speculation that The Game
is (a) some kind of military training exercise to discover natural-born
killers, or (b) a sort of national punishment meted out in tough
times to keep the restive youth of Japan in line. Neither is
the case. Slaughtering 41 students to find one with the
proper killer instinct is not only inefficient and supremely
wasteful, but makes no sense given that the winner could survive
purely by luck (as opposed to any kind of skill or initiative)
and may well emerge so physically/mentally damaged as to be
useless to the military. As for the punishment angle, this too
is illogical since the classes are chosen by random computer
lottery; theoretically the most dutiful, obedient and patriotic
kids in Japan could end up having to kill each other. If the
BR Program is a punishment, why aren't just the classes with
the most disciplinary problems offered up for selection? (The
flip side to punishment is reward. There is none here,
even for being a virginal, law abiding Richie Cunningham.) I
don't think it's a spoiler to reveal that in the novel, the
Game's true raison d'être is quite simple... Unknown
to the public, high government officials wager large sums of
money on which kid they think will win.
Author Takami paints
a bleak picture of an alternate reality Japan run by a corporate-fascist
dictatorship, in which free enterprise is permitted (except
when it undermines morality and/or the state, as in the case
of banned rock 'n' roll music) but individual freedom is not.
The government can pass any law it wants, using the media to
make it palatable and eventually part of the social fabric.
(Thus the Battle Royale program has no real function other than
as an amusement for the unseen elites who control the levers
of power.) Yet
in the film, no mention is made of a dictatorship. Set
in a time of economic and social turmoil, it
still presents modern Japan as we basically know it —
only with
this one crazy edict that pits teens against one another in
a battle to the death. A brief prologue indicates that the law
was enacted to teach the increasingly restive youth that adults
have ultimate authority over them whether they like it or not
— though as stated above, this makes little sense given that
the well-behaved kids are just as likely to be subject to it.
(In fact, only a tiny minority of the 42 classmates forced to
play are truly juvenile delinquents.) By removing the political
element the filmmakers ill-serve the source material, which
depicts the machinations of a repressive regime compounding
the social rift between the generations.
Even so, Battle Royale is a
potent, at times stunning, motion picture which I can enthusiastically
recommend. Its only sour notes are the occasional overuse of
heavyhanded music and (in the director's cut at least) a series
of pointless epilogues tacked on the end. But these are minor
quibbles. The film really grips you by the throat and doesn't
let go.
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The
director's cut of Battle Royale is
exported by South Korean video company Starmax. It's Region 0
NTSC, fully compatible with North American players and TVs. Even
so, the two-disc set is not sold 'new' by Amazon or the other
major e-tailers. I got mine through xploitedcinema.com,
a relatively small 'Mom & Pop' operation I've patronized from
time to time. I can personally vouch for the company's fast, reliable
service.
Disc 1
contains the film, anamorphically letterboxed at 1:78.1, looking
in turns good to excellent (Mostly the latter.) The 5.1 audio
mix is solid and really enhances the action. (There's also a Dolby
2.0 track that doesn't.) Korean and English subtitles are provided;
I shudder to think what an English-dubbed version would be like.
I found the English subs a bit lacking —
a better text font would've helped and the translation is occasionally
off in regards to spelling.
Disc 2 is jam-packed with extras: behind-the-scenes
featurettes covering all major aspects of the production and marketing,
some background on the novel's release, even a piece on the creation
of the special edition DVD. Trailers, too. Too bad I neither understand
Japanese or read Korean; there are no English subtitles for any
of this bonus stuff. That's why I copped out and gave the DVD
set a rating of "N/A." I can't really evaluate it properly.
But if you want to see this movie this is a good way to go. (Tartan
UK also exports an all-Region NTSC version, but it doesn't offer
any of the documentaries and reportedly has inferior A/V qualities
— though superior subtitling.)
5/18/04 |
| UPDATE
The Starmax set reviewed here went OOP a year or so after this
review. Amazon began selling the Toei single-disc version in June
2004. It's the same cut of the film as described above. Also,
Xploited Cinema has since closed up shop. |
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