Battle Royale is one hell of a movie. The premise goes something like this: in the near-future, Japan’s youth have become so violent and unruly that the government has passed the “Battle Royale” act. Once a year, a classroom of ninth grade students are kidnapped, dropped on an island and given an assortment of weapons. After three days, the one student left alive gets to go home. If more than one student lives the whole three days, then all of them die.

That is the basic gist of the plot. It brings to mind images of William Golding’s legendary Lord of the Flies, as a pack of children go violently mad once unobserved by the adult world. Contemporary viewers will also immediately thinking of The Hunger Games, the widely acclaimed Suzanne Collins novel and its popular film adaptations (a work, I suspect, inspired by the same sources as Battle Royale rather than by Battle Royale itself). What these images don’t sufficiently express however, is the sheer over-the-top violence and horror of
the actual film. This is not your standard, everyday action flick, and it goes a long distance beyond anything seen in The Hunger Games. Battle Royale depicts forty confused teenagers killing each other one by one using automatic firearms, hatchets, crossbows, grenades and all manner of other weapons – both deadly and hilariously inoffensive. There is a lot of blood. Nothing is implied – it’s all shown to you right there on the screen.

Despite the apparent gratuitousness of the film, it’s actually a very clever and unexpectedly moving satire. It juggles a lot of different emotions – some parts of the film are horrific, others laugh-out-loud funny, others painfully heartfelt. It’s a virtuoso juggling act in terms of both writing and direction. The film is directed by the late Kinji Fukasaku, whose most famous film before this was his 1973 yakuza movie Battle Without Honor or Humanity. His son Kenta wrote the screenplay for him, as well as co-produced the film.

Battle Royale relies immeasurably on an incredibly strong teenage cast. It’s an exaggerated and graphic film based on what is to be fair a ridiculous premise. As a result, it needs a strong cast to sell it to the audience. The young stars have not failed in this regard. Tatsuya Fujiwara in particular is excellent as narrator/lead Shuya Nanahara.

Comedian turned actor/director Takeshi Kitano is the only prominent adult in the film, playing an inexplicably motivated yet hilariously played school teacher in control of the unfolding massacre. Kitano is an exceptionally gifted performer, with a very dry delivery. Battle Royale shows off his comedy skills in a way that may surprise those familiar with him through his dramatic works.

Battle Royale was quite controversial on its original release, and took several years to find international distribution. Its critics are correct in that it is an extremely violent and bloody movie. It is also produced in the most responsible of tastes. It horrifies us because it’s
supposed to. It is not simply satire, but social commentary; not simply a sensational over-the-top movie, but an important one as well.