Battle Royale

****
To escape the neverending critique of its persistence towards teenager on teenager crime, Battle Royale (2000) needed to have other attributes besides it's in-your-face, stylistic violence. With stone-faced Beat Takashi as a worn down schoolteacher given carte blanche to address the students in ways his traditional system of learning was set up against, a satire on teenage disorderly conduct, and the desperate response used by adults gaining back leverage over the youth; BR equips itself with clever weapons beyond the literal display of carnage and young casualties. The Hunger Games, this is not. It doesn't wear a deeply serious tone all the time, but in doses. Beat has classrooms empty as the students decide just not to show up. A troublemaking student decides, for the hell of it, to slash his ass with a knife!  Kids bully the weaker and are selected to become unwilling participants in a survival island three day contest, signed into law to combat bad teenage behavior having turned into an epidemic in Japan. Some have been in the BR before and have their reasons to voluntarily return, whether it be revenge or because they are sadistic. Friends turn on friends. Allies turn on allies. The clumsy and nervous often fall. Some will kill anyone to survive. Some develop a taste for killing. And because only one can survive alliances are temporary. A collar on every throat is an explosive device that will kill if the kids are where they shouldn't be at a certain time or do the wrong thing. That kid that caused Beat a lot of grief? Beat makes him go KABOOM! Machine guns, crossbows, sharp cutting/stabbing instruments, poison, bombs...tools of destruction in the game are permitted. Be careful as no one hardly can be trusted. When the agenda is to be the sole survivor, friendships and partnerships are momentary or fall to the wayside at a moment's notice.

Although a lot of the students are just basically serving as young bodies torn asunder by weaponry, leaving behind body counts actually counted (yes, names added to the body count so that those listed are accounted for to determine who is left as a victor must be decorated accordingly), there are characters clearly established as leads certain to make it through to the end. Like orphaned Nanahara (Tatsuya Fujiwara), who sees his buddy (the one that slashed Beat’s ass) die due to the neck collar explosive. The sweet and soft Nakagawa (Aki Maeda) who this buddy has a crush on, Nanahara keeps watch over (of course, they basically keep watch on each other). Shôgo Kawada (Tarô Yamamoto) has an ax to grind, having volunteered to reenter BR to get revenge for the death of his girl. Shôgo’s adversary, Kiriyama (Masanobu Andô), is totally homicidal, having volunteered just to continue killing folks! Kiriyama is always running around with a machine gun, firing like a madman. He’s cunning and sneaky, underhanded and unpredictable. He’s like that missile you aren’t ever quite prepared for. Shôgo does offer an alliance with Nanahara and Kawada, but his intentions might have ulterior motives. Chiaki Kuriyama might have that face you go, “Hey, that’s GoGo!” but she’s not but a small part within the killing spree, getting a dramatic death scene where she passes after an encounter with an obsessive student.

So the moving parts move about the island of death trying to kill or be killed. Some have been friends since their childhood, but uncertainty and paranoia (obviously considering if they don’t kill each other they all die!) causes them to react…quite violently.

There’s no surprise of the controversy, the censorship and negative response to the source material and film version, considering its politics and unnerving violence involving youth. This kind of film and material is perfect for stirring up those who might find its presentation or whatever message that might emerge (whether intended or not) and cause an uproar. It is a blunt force object, for sure.