Having nearly exhausted the catalog of "good" horror movies, I've turned to explore more "shock" cinema, of which Japan is currently forefront, mostly because of Takashi Miike's twisted brilliance. I've heard much about Battle Royale since its release in 2000, particularly in regard towards its shocking premise and excessive gore. I was excited to see this movie, but was sorely disappointed with the actual experience.
Obviously inspired by Richard Connell's short story "The Most Dangerous Game" and Golding's novel Lord of the Flies, Battle Royale puts a class of forty-some students on an island. Tracked with explosive collars, they must kill each other until only one survives; if they refuse, the collars explode and they all die.
This premise, however, is poorly executed. As a substitute for effective storytelling, the movie uses clichéd characters. They are cardboard cutouts easily recognizable by anyone who has ever seen/read any anime/manga. There's the "mysterious and dangerous transfer student" right beside the "crazy/psychotic student" that are sitting behind the "couple who hasn't confessed their love for each other." The real interesting characters are, of course, the ones that fall outside of these stereotypes. Those characters, however, have very little screen timejust a scene or twobefore they are killed. The possible exception is Chiaki Kuriyama, who inspired Tarantino's Gogo in Kill Bill.
This brings me to the movie's fatal flaw. The movie shows every single student die. That's 42 deaths crammed into a 2 hour film, actually, more like an hour and a half considering the class isn't on the island for the first part of the movie. This creates many problems, cinematically. Half of the time, the movie basically follows the story of the four, rather uninteresting stereotypes, for most of the movie. The other half, you're introduced to a dozen other plot lines that are never fleshed-out. The main storyline is constantly interrupted by sequences of subplots. This ruins the movie's pacingyou can't help but notice that they're trying to cram too much into the movie. Since these subplots are glossed over instead of explored, they come off as basically excuses to show more students die. Now being a horror movie and shock movie fan, I don't have a problem with a lot of people dying, but when there are only 4 or 5 memorable deaths out of the 40-some, it's not a good sign.
Which brings me to another let-down of the film. I kept hearing that the movie was incredibly gory and violent. However, I'd be willing to say that the violence in this movie is on-par with US prime-time TV, say some of the CSIs or Nip/Tuck. There's a good amount of cheap looking CG as well, you know, the kind you get from crappy straight to video movies that Sci-Fi shows on Saturday nights: Killer Rats, or perhaps Python. Overall, this movie is no gorier or violent than the mid-Friday the 13th movies, it simply has a higher body count.
The movie fails to redeem itself with its ending as well. You'll be able to see the "twist" ending a mile away.
This over-the-top movie makes its social analysis hard to miss, but all of these problems simply work to undermine any kind of commentary the movie makes on contemporary Japan and its youth.
Although I've never read the novel or the manga, I'd say that this would have made a much better miniseries or TV show. That way, the clichéd, main characters' story would be somewhat marginalized, giving voice to the more unique characters and room to explore some of the more complicated social dynamics that were only glanced at in the movie.
As it stands, howeverlike many ambitious horror/shock filmsBattle Royale has only a few notable elements buried in a mess of problems.
Obviously inspired by Richard Connell's short story "The Most Dangerous Game" and Golding's novel Lord of the Flies, Battle Royale puts a class of forty-some students on an island. Tracked with explosive collars, they must kill each other until only one survives; if they refuse, the collars explode and they all die.
This premise, however, is poorly executed. As a substitute for effective storytelling, the movie uses clichéd characters. They are cardboard cutouts easily recognizable by anyone who has ever seen/read any anime/manga. There's the "mysterious and dangerous transfer student" right beside the "crazy/psychotic student" that are sitting behind the "couple who hasn't confessed their love for each other." The real interesting characters are, of course, the ones that fall outside of these stereotypes. Those characters, however, have very little screen timejust a scene or twobefore they are killed. The possible exception is Chiaki Kuriyama, who inspired Tarantino's Gogo in Kill Bill.
This brings me to the movie's fatal flaw. The movie shows every single student die. That's 42 deaths crammed into a 2 hour film, actually, more like an hour and a half considering the class isn't on the island for the first part of the movie. This creates many problems, cinematically. Half of the time, the movie basically follows the story of the four, rather uninteresting stereotypes, for most of the movie. The other half, you're introduced to a dozen other plot lines that are never fleshed-out. The main storyline is constantly interrupted by sequences of subplots. This ruins the movie's pacingyou can't help but notice that they're trying to cram too much into the movie. Since these subplots are glossed over instead of explored, they come off as basically excuses to show more students die. Now being a horror movie and shock movie fan, I don't have a problem with a lot of people dying, but when there are only 4 or 5 memorable deaths out of the 40-some, it's not a good sign.
Which brings me to another let-down of the film. I kept hearing that the movie was incredibly gory and violent. However, I'd be willing to say that the violence in this movie is on-par with US prime-time TV, say some of the CSIs or Nip/Tuck. There's a good amount of cheap looking CG as well, you know, the kind you get from crappy straight to video movies that Sci-Fi shows on Saturday nights: Killer Rats, or perhaps Python. Overall, this movie is no gorier or violent than the mid-Friday the 13th movies, it simply has a higher body count.
The movie fails to redeem itself with its ending as well. You'll be able to see the "twist" ending a mile away.
This over-the-top movie makes its social analysis hard to miss, but all of these problems simply work to undermine any kind of commentary the movie makes on contemporary Japan and its youth.
Although I've never read the novel or the manga, I'd say that this would have made a much better miniseries or TV show. That way, the clichéd, main characters' story would be somewhat marginalized, giving voice to the more unique characters and room to explore some of the more complicated social dynamics that were only glanced at in the movie.
As it stands, howeverlike many ambitious horror/shock filmsBattle Royale has only a few notable elements buried in a mess of problems.