Death Game Park (2010)

I just finished watching this, and I can say, I'm bit irritated, but on the same time, really satisfied about what I had watched. "It's like a Battle Royale", got me interested about this drama, but to be honest, saying "the movie is like SAW" would describe it better. (To me, this isn't really bad thing, since I could watch SAWs anywhere, anytime. ?)

STORY
What comes to story, I enjoyed it a lot, though the start of the game was such a cliche. You know right away, who is the main character, and who are going to be with him the whole time. Story goes smoothly, and since I watched this as a "movie version", I didn't even notice how almost 2 hours passed by. Small warning about the ending; Mindf*uck and if you've seen the video 'angry German kid' in Youtube, well, beware, you might see another one in the end of the drama.

ACTING/CAST
To be honest, I started to watch this only because I knew Aibu Saki was acting on it. Well, she only showed up few times. Anyway, the whole cast was great. About acting I can't say same. Few actors did well, but few didn't. Death scenes had really crappy acting and another scenes, where I just wanted to hit my head to wall, was during scenes when the maincharacter had a headache. When you watch it, you know why. Fight scenes were made well, btw.

Though there were lots of not-so-good acting in this series, and I don't remember anything about the soundtrack, I'd watch this again. I found this entertaining, since the plot was bit different from the usual 'death game'-plots and there were few scenes, where was really good acting and the use of camera etc. was amazing, especially during last 30 minutes.

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I began watching this show because it was supposedly like "Battle Royale." The only thing these two works have in common is that there are young people involved in a psychological game involving death and killing. It's more along the lines of "Kaiji" or "Insight Mill," but not as good as either of those.



The concept is really interesting. It's complex, energetic, and a little dark. The way in which the story unfolds is where things fall apart. In what appears to be an attempt to jostle the viewer and communicate unsettling suspense, much of the story is cryptic and ambiguous. I am a big fan of restraint in storytelling and am annoyed when things are spelled out too clearly, but this film over-corrected and went too far in the opposite direction. This resulted in the end feeling very rushed. That said, I did enjoy the way in which the film started.



The acting was OK. The actors were all gorgeous. Set design and cinematography were typical for the genre. The music was generic, I wouldn't watch it again, ever.



I finished watching it, but that's the best thing I can say about it, lol. Definitely a solid "4/watchable."

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