Battle Royal (2000)

 

Genre: Thriller/ Action

Time: 2 hours

Director: Kinji Fukasaku

Quick Summary: In the future, the Japanese government captures a class of ninth-grade students and forces them to kill one another under the revolutionary "Battle Royale" act.

Wow that was nice of them giving the students unlimited ammo.

Even though I've literally just watched this film (roughly an hour ago) it feels like a blurr. I couldn't really tell you what happened when as a bunch of different storylines were happening at once. All of this is honestly pretty clunky, even the beginning doesn't seem to start off on strong feet. There was this one painful moment where I thought they were going to introduce every student from the group of 40 something to show off who they are their personalities, as they did the first 10 or so which took forever.

Having 40 different students that needed to die, meant there was certainly a lot of deaths. Sadly, instead of being gruesome and brutal, they came across as more comical which wasn't helped by the extremely fake and watery blood they used. It's the classic, gasp or scream or even "somehow manages to speak even though their throat is slit" just before they die, and just incredibly dramatic that usually comes with young actors in low budget films. 

Going back to the different plots, just to explain briefly, high-school drama between various students, but 40 of them condensed into a 2 hour film that also has the main murder each other plot going on. We have several different romances trying to stay together, romances trying to happen, crushes, bitch fests, actual bitchy people, people just killing because it's fun, a survivor from another Battle Royal, people trying to not fight, and multiple backstories being rushed through. Let alone, our main characters trying to be the focus in all of this. I think I missed some things from blinking a few times too.

This doesn't really do a good job at setting up either, explaining the "Battle Royal Act" which forces these students to fight. All I could gather was that because that generation of students were so violent and reckless, choosing to not do school after a ressecion, the Japanese Government thought this would stop that. Sure that will help, I guess? Trauma does people good, right?

I will say, I wasn't bored at all watching this. In fact I was entertained with how cheesy it was and the deaths were pretty funny sometimes. The premis is interesting too, think of hungers games but not as good. Might be good to pass the time with some friends, or by yourself if you want to laugh a bit at something. Overall it's not brilliant. It falls flat a lot of the time because of how messy it is, maybe the book is better? 

5/10

"Chigusa: [dying] God, can I tell him one more thing? You look really cool, Hiroki.."