taehyungsfatnose
This review may contain spoilers
Let the games begin!
What would you do if you were suddenly pitted against your closest friends in a fight to the death? Director Kinji Fukasaku's film adaptation of writer Koushun Takami's short story Batoru Rowaiaru is a hearty, dramatic, exciting and very well-made story that manages to touch on all levels.
The year is 2000. We are in a fictional future Japan where the entire nation has recently collapsed. Huge unemployment and juvenile delinquency prevail in the country. Adults have lost confidence and fear the younger generation more and more, which leads to a new reform action being put into use by the government to overcome the problems - Battle Royale.
Battle Royale involves a middle school class being selected through a very careful lottery, kidnapped and then sent to an isolated island where they are forced to fight each other for 3 days until only 1 survivor remains.
It is with a very raw and merciless violence that the director Kinji Fukasaku depicts the central plot of Battle Royale. We follow class 9B, a group of young school students who have become like a family to each other and who are suddenly pitted against their best friends in a brutal fight to the death.
As a viewer, you quickly grow fond of many of the characters, which gives you the feeling that you are almost in their midst. The moment when the game on the island is set in motion, when each student is given a randomly selected weapon and sent out to take on each other, was in my opinion one of the strongest and most uncomfortable scenes of the film. We get to see how some react with panic and do everything to survive while others stick together and do everything they can to stop it all.
We mainly follow 3 main characters during the course of the film, primarily the students Shuya Nanahara and Noriko Nagakawa. Shuya has a difficult past that left a strong impression on him. By his side he has Noriko, a girl who has been very fond of him for a long time.
These 2 are also joined by Shougo Kawada, who participated in the game once before. He is portrayed as a somewhat erratic person. We never really know where we have him and what his intentions are. This uncertainty contributes to a very exciting and intense atmosphere between the 3 who stick together during the time they are on the island where the brutal game takes place.
The film's antagonist Kitano is played by a brilliant Takeshi Kitano (Sonatine and Outrage). The interesting thing about this character is that we get to see him in different contexts, whereby his personality changes between the situations. Kitano is initially the teacher of Class 9B under the chaotic conditions of collapsed Japan.
He is portrayed during this stage as a very inferior and fearful person who has completely given up hope for the youth he teaches. Here we get an equally clear and frightening picture of how the situation in the country has affected the adults and how the young people have now taken the law into their own hands.
When he then leads the Battle Royale where his former students participate as players, it is he who once again holds the stick, but in this context there is no trace of the submissive and fearful teacher - Here instead a completely emotional, sadistic and mentally unstable person appears, who seems capable of any number of horrors.
At the same time, during the course of the story, we learn more about Kitano's personal background and the root of his madness and callousness. Beneath the character's frightening exterior, there are nevertheless glimpses of goodness, which almost forces the viewer to feel a certain sympathy for him. Therefore, the audience is kept in a tense uncertainty about what kind of person Kitano really is.
While Battle Royale is a very exciting movie experience, it is also a very dramatic and scary story with a lot of moral undertones. Both the fantastic character direction and the, in several cases, extraordinary performances contribute to this. Fukasaku has managed to portray the plot of Koushun Takami's novel of the same title in a realistic yet frightening way and delivers a cinematic experience that you simply cannot miss.
The year is 2000. We are in a fictional future Japan where the entire nation has recently collapsed. Huge unemployment and juvenile delinquency prevail in the country. Adults have lost confidence and fear the younger generation more and more, which leads to a new reform action being put into use by the government to overcome the problems - Battle Royale.
Battle Royale involves a middle school class being selected through a very careful lottery, kidnapped and then sent to an isolated island where they are forced to fight each other for 3 days until only 1 survivor remains.
It is with a very raw and merciless violence that the director Kinji Fukasaku depicts the central plot of Battle Royale. We follow class 9B, a group of young school students who have become like a family to each other and who are suddenly pitted against their best friends in a brutal fight to the death.
As a viewer, you quickly grow fond of many of the characters, which gives you the feeling that you are almost in their midst. The moment when the game on the island is set in motion, when each student is given a randomly selected weapon and sent out to take on each other, was in my opinion one of the strongest and most uncomfortable scenes of the film. We get to see how some react with panic and do everything to survive while others stick together and do everything they can to stop it all.
We mainly follow 3 main characters during the course of the film, primarily the students Shuya Nanahara and Noriko Nagakawa. Shuya has a difficult past that left a strong impression on him. By his side he has Noriko, a girl who has been very fond of him for a long time.
These 2 are also joined by Shougo Kawada, who participated in the game once before. He is portrayed as a somewhat erratic person. We never really know where we have him and what his intentions are. This uncertainty contributes to a very exciting and intense atmosphere between the 3 who stick together during the time they are on the island where the brutal game takes place.
The film's antagonist Kitano is played by a brilliant Takeshi Kitano (Sonatine and Outrage). The interesting thing about this character is that we get to see him in different contexts, whereby his personality changes between the situations. Kitano is initially the teacher of Class 9B under the chaotic conditions of collapsed Japan.
He is portrayed during this stage as a very inferior and fearful person who has completely given up hope for the youth he teaches. Here we get an equally clear and frightening picture of how the situation in the country has affected the adults and how the young people have now taken the law into their own hands.
When he then leads the Battle Royale where his former students participate as players, it is he who once again holds the stick, but in this context there is no trace of the submissive and fearful teacher - Here instead a completely emotional, sadistic and mentally unstable person appears, who seems capable of any number of horrors.
At the same time, during the course of the story, we learn more about Kitano's personal background and the root of his madness and callousness. Beneath the character's frightening exterior, there are nevertheless glimpses of goodness, which almost forces the viewer to feel a certain sympathy for him. Therefore, the audience is kept in a tense uncertainty about what kind of person Kitano really is.
While Battle Royale is a very exciting movie experience, it is also a very dramatic and scary story with a lot of moral undertones. Both the fantastic character direction and the, in several cases, extraordinary performances contribute to this. Fukasaku has managed to portray the plot of Koushun Takami's novel of the same title in a realistic yet frightening way and delivers a cinematic experience that you simply cannot miss.
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