Battle Royale
Battle Royale is a Japanese horror movie which is set in the future where there is an act called the “Battle Royale” Act. This act is set to help control the rebellious youngsters by pitting them in a deathmatch on a deserted island. It runs 121 minutes and is rated R.
Now when I got this movie in from Netflix I was uber amped. I heard about the brutality. I heard about the cool iconic moments. I heard a great song from Does It Offend You, Yeah?. Anyways, it lived up to the brutality. Cool iconic moments were few and far between but otherwise it was mindless fun.
The movie centers around three students; Shuya, Noriko, and Shougo. I don’t know the actors so we’ll just call them that. These three draw a close bond during their trials as Shougo has played before. This really is a good point of the movie as you feel for these guys as they struggle to survive. The villian of the movie is Kazuo Kiriyama and he is seriously a supreme villian. Kazuo, like Shougo also has survived a previous Battle Royale act enforcement. The moment seeing Kazuo walking through the fire is a legit iconic moment in the movie.
Overall, this movie is littered sometimes with too many people but as it goes further into the movie it gets better. The acting is terrible by most except for the four central characters I have previously mentioned. There is also good acting by Japanese action star legend Takeshi Kitano who is also a bad ass villian.
Really the only redeeming quality of this movie is the fight scenes. There is a stringy rope of which they give you to feel sympathy for the characters but then again that’s most Japanese movies for you. I would suggest to watch this with no expectations because mine were dashed. It is a good mindless action movie and nothing more. It is not a classic.
Final Verdict: 3.1/5
