Battle Royale (2000) Starring Takeshi Kitano, Tatsuya Fujiwara & Aki Maeda Directed by Kinji Fukasaku Written by Koushun Takami & Kenta Fukasaku

"The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee; the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist."

- William Golding, Lord of the Flies

"Here's your list of friends, in the order they died."

-Kitano

One of the greatest thrills for a movie lover is to be caught off-guard. There's no greater joy than sitting down for a movie you hadn't given any major consideration, only to be left on the edge of your seat. When you find such, the first instinct is to make as many people watch it as possible. You want desperately to be able to share the experience with someone. This happened for me with the documentary Hated: G.G Allin and the Murder Junkies. It happened with Roman Holiday. And it happened with Battle Royale, AKA Lord of the Flies on Mescaline as Envisioned by a Still Relevant Sam Peckinpah Following a Particularly Bad Three-Day Bender in the Desert.

Based on Koushun Takami's novel of the same name, Battle Royale begins with the youth of Japan having grown incorrigible. For a society whose value system has been based around honor and tradition since the Heian Period, such a regression is unacceptable. To combat the rising epidemic of delinquency, "The Adults" implement the Millennium Educational Reform Act. The BR Act, as it becomes known, kidnaps a ninth-grade class at random, places them on an island, then forces the pupils to kill one another over the course of three days. On the third day, the sole survivor is deemed the champion, and the process repeats itself the following year.

As a means to promote activity, the children are strapped with electronic collars that monitor their location and, when necessary, blow up that child's head. The students are issued a survival bag containing provisions such as food and water. To off-set natural selection, the bag also comes equipped with a random weapon. Where one student may receive an AK-47 assault riffle, another student receives a pot lid. As the three days press on, the unwilling combatants are forced onto an ever-shrinking plot of land. (To prevent someone from hiding out in a cave or tree, the island is blocked off into zones. Hourly updates inform the players which zones are restricted, on pain of death.)

And this is the premise of Battle Royale.

It could be easily argued that Battle Royale is nothing more than a composite of such movies as Salo, o le 120 giornate di Sodoma, The Running Man, and Dead Lock. What Battle Royale brings to the table is teenage politics. Nearly every act of violence is based around the insecurities and conflictions inherent in being 15 and uncertain of everything. I'm at a loss to think of any movie where an armed stand-off ends with, "You were always trying to fuck my boyfriend." Or, this last exchange of dying lovers: "You look really cool, Hiroki." To be sincerely replied with, "You too, you're the coolest girl in the world." The class structure of high school persists in this makeshift battlefield. Social circles remain, and even the unfairness of those years abounds. Two mysterious transfer students/ringers are introduced to the class at the start of the game. One is a teenage Snake Plissken, while the other resembles a forgotten member of The Strokes.

The message the movie hopes to impart can be muddled. No bones about it, it's fucking violent. Could Battle Royale be a reflection of how we've grown desensitized and/or accepting of violence? The scene of Kuriyama Chiaki (Gogo in Kill Bill) firing at an opponent to the score of Bach's Air on a G-String supports such a perspective. Perhaps the violence is meant to represent the universal feeling of being a teenager and feeling the world against you as you fight to establish a sense of who you are as an adult. (I'm still working on that one.) Or, it's an allegory of just how fucking ruthless and indifferent this world can be. There's a good chance the meaning escaped me. I'm not particularly smart, and I'll be honest - I haven't watched this movie in a couple of years. (In fact, the same goes for most of the movies I review on this site. Hell, I didn't even watch some of them.) For me, I find meaning in the fact that I was able to draw three separate interpretations from Battle Royale. I'm sure anyone who reads this and watches it will draw something of their won. Isn't that a measure of great art, though? That from a single work, each can draw their own meaning and interpretation. Such thought lends itself to introspection, ending in us thinking about ourselves and our place.

Fuck it. I think the Meat Puppets said it best, " . . . the work, it was fun."

Battle Royale failed to secure a US Distributor that the producers felt would be able to bring the attention the movie deserved. (In defense of the distributors, the Conservative backlash against this movie would have been far greater than anything Natural Born Killers, or any of the Grand Theft Auto games experienced, combined.) It's available on DVD from various overseas vendors. Take note of the multiple editions being sold. You manga reading fanboy purists may be tempted to order the Director's Cut. . . Don't! This edition tacks on eight-minutes to the ending. Where the credits would normally roll, a series of out-of-context, terribly subtitled scenes play out, killing the finale. Stick with the 112-minute release.

WARNING: You will want a Japanese girlfriend after watching this movie.