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Battle Royale
Movie (★★★)
DVD (★★)
NR,114 minutes
Quentin Tarantino's *Kill Bill* series was in large part an homage to a number of cult films that had influenced the director's career. Subsequently, these movies were the beneficiaries of renewed interest from the United States, perhaps none more so than Kini Fukasaki's *Battle Royale*. This Japanese film was initially released in 2000, but it was unavailable in the United States until recently.
The movie takes place in the future of Japan, where student riots have led to the passage of the BR law. As a result of this law, 42 seventh-graders are sent to a remote island. There they are told that only one may leave, and only after the other 41 have died. If there is more than one student alive after three days, every student will be killed.
The plot is really quite incidental to the purpose of the film, which is to relish in the hellacious violence that permeates nearly every frame. Nothing like seeing a child having his head blown off. The violence seems to be indicative of the larger influence that Japanese anime has had on this film. Anime is marked by a unique, post-modern disconnect with
traditional form and substance, and so is Battle Royale. All the visual markers of anime are present: schoolgirl outfits, spurting blood, wildly coiffed hair.
Besides the gleeful violence and the anime tropes, the film is also interesting because of its stars. While most of the characters are anonymous — especially in their deaths — viewers may recognize Chiaki Kuriyama, the mace-wielding assassin in Kill Bill Vol. 1. Also present in the film is Takeshi Kitano, who plays the captain in charge of this sadistic game. An adult video viewer would know Kitano as one of the members of Spike TV's Most Extreme Elimination Challenge (MXC), but he is actually an accomplished Japanese actor, director and author.
It's easy to see why Tarantino admires Battle Royale so much. The film's hilarious and shocking administration of violence makes it a companion to works such as Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs. Its vision of the future is Lord of the Flies filtered through the eyes of an ultra-violent Japanese cartoon.
—Will Lamborn