Movie Review: Battle Royale

MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING! This review and discussion contains numerous spoilers. If you don't want to have the movie ruined before you see it, or you want to skip this post because it's really, really long, click here to go to the next post.

I've hesitated many times to post this review of the Japanese movie Battle Royale. Quite simply, it is one very shocking movie for many Americans. Not in what it shows on screen, which is surpassed by most Western slasher movies, but for what it is about. It's so controversial that it hasn't even had an official American release; it's only available as a British import of the Korean special edition! The Japanese studio (Toei) that made it refuses to ink a deal with American distributors for reasons unknown. Here in Memphis, I know of only two places where you can find it: Black Lodge Video and Midtown Video.

I hesitate because the film's reputation and circle of awareness has been so low-profile that it has escaped the attention of those who would profit from the media circus that would attend its raised profile. That's good; this is most definitely not a movie for the masses.

Having said all that, I'm sure your mind is racing, wondering what could be so terrible, so awful, that its fans want to keep it an open secret. Well, strictly speaking, it's not that horrible, except in the shadow of the Columbine student massacre as well as the school shootings of the time, which got a lot of media over-exposure. As the recent release of the video of Kleborn, Harris and friends taking target practice in the Colorado woods showed, there's still a sore spot, a raw part of America's psyche for some, that reflexively draws outrage.

Battle Royale is most assuredly a movie to make those folks howl. Made by Kinji Fukasaku in 1999, it was released in Japan with their equivalent of an "R" rating, prohibiting kids (the subject of the movie) from seeing it. The film was so successful that in two months it was recut into a "PG-13" version that went on to even bigger success. The director later filmed some more scenes, added some more footage, and gored up some violence to create a "Special Version" which had a third successful run. (This is the version available here.) It was unprecedented in Japan and I don't think anything like that has occurred here in America.

The film was the ultimate of its genre: films about the pressure of being a kid in contemporary Japan and the angry divide between generations. BR took that anger to the highest, most absurd level, and in doing so touched off an explosion of similar films, some of which are available in America now. In fact, the exploitation of kids in contemporary Japan is startling to Americans who discover it. It's the soil from which this film arises.

So, what's all the fuss? The film opens with some exposition about how, "in the near future," the Japanese economy collapsed and kids lost hope in the future and their parents' generation. Kids began to "boycott" school by the hundreds of thousands, and those who bothered to go were disrespectful and violent, making schools a dangerous place. The "Battle Royale Act" was passed by the Parliament in response.

Every year, the worst ninth-grade classes in the country were nominated by their teachers. A lottery was held and the "winner" was sent to an isolated island that had only the ruins of an abandoned small town, for the Battle Royale. Only one student would be allowed to leave the island alive.

The film cuts to a crush of reporters swarming around a military jeep inching its way along a jungle path, surrounded by soldiers. We see a small girl with her head bowed in the passenger seat. The reporters are trying to get a shot of her, talking about "this year's winner" in the Battle Royale (BR for short). The girl looks up. Her face is covered in blood, as is her nightgown and the small doll she holds. Her expression is breath-taking, a shocking mix of glee, pride and malevolence, the kind of expression I'm sure no parent ever wants to see on their child, it is so horrifying. It's a viscerally disturbing image, almost iconic.

Next we meet Class 3-B, a group of seventh graders. Well, we meet Noriko when she shows up for class and finds she's the only one there. Her teacher (perfectly played by Japanese screen legend "Beat" Takeshi Kitano), tells her sadly that the rest of the class has boycotted the day. In the hallway, a student (nobu) runs from another class with a knife and stabs Kitano in the ass! He drops the knife and Noriko picks it up. She won't give up who stabbed him, though we're pretty sure he knows anyway. We can see Kitano's earlier pleasure is now seemingly betrayed.

Kitano retires and we jump forward two more years. Now the kids are ninth-graders and its the last day of class. They are taken on a special school outing. The characters of Noriko, Nobu and Nanahara are quickly fleshed out for us. Along the way, the bus is gassed and the students black out. They wake up on BR island, in an abandoned schoolroom. Suddenly, helicopters descend and soldiers pile out, to swarm the class room, guns drawn. The students, naturally, are frightened and confused by all this.

Kitano returns and explains they are this year's BR selection for worst class. The students seem never to have heard of the Battle Royale, one of many strange points in the movie that aren't explained, but which I'll cover later. When Kitano notes that their present teacher objected to their selection, his bloody body is wheeled in by soldiers. (How did Kitano, retired for two years, get to nominate his former class?) One student expresses discomfort with the whole idea and gets a knife in her head from Kitano. This is only the first of many, many more shocking deaths in this shocking film.

Kitano explains: every student has been fitted with a collar with a tracking device and an explosive. They have three days in which to kill each other so that only one remains. They decide who that one is by their actions. If no student dies in a twenty-four hour period, the collars explode; if a student wanders into one of a constantly changing number of "danger zones," the collars explode. If three days elapse and more than one student has survived, the collars explode.

Nobu objects violently and Kitano activates his collar. Nobu runs around the room, screaming and angry, begging for helpas the other students try their best to avoid him. His collar explodes and a spray of blood ends Nobu. The other students are stunned. Their new reality is sinking in.

One by one, the students are given a backpack with one weapon (everything from a pot lid, to a GPS system, binoculars, a crossbow, knives and guns of various types, to automatic rifles.), food, water and a map. Each student runs a gantlet of soldiers into the woods. The Battle Royale is on.

That's only the first twenty minutes. The rest of the movie follows the students (mostly Noriko and Nanahara, Nobu's friend) as they try solutions. Some commit suicide immediately, trying the only way they know to defy the game. One waits outside the school and tries to kill the others as they come out. But he's a boy in far over his head, as the movie makes clear, and quickly dies.

Some girls call out from a field for a truce, and participation in a cease-fire. They're gunned down, too-easy targets. Some go solo; others pair with friends and boy/girlfriends. Some get the ugly spirit immediately and start killing, doing what the adults want or unleashing their own demon.

Many of you are no doubt already outraged. The whole concept is unquestionably tasteless and revolting. Kids murdering kids for the entertaining revenge of adults? Teacher/student relations carried to an absurdist extreme? It's important to note, though, that this movie doesn't glorify the violence, nor does it make miniature adults of the kids.

The kids in the film are supposed to be fifteen, along with two older ringers put in the game to "make it more interesting." They are played by actors who range in age from fifteen to twenty-one, who look the part. And, most important, they act like ninth-graders. This is the film's saving grace and what makes it a powerful, if disturbing, experience.

For example, shortly after being sent out, we see a group of the class thugs, the ones who play at being "hard" and "tough," as they bring one of the captured ringers to be taunted and bullied. It's just like watching any playground bullies pick on the weak kid, until the ringer manages to grab one of the rifles. In seconds, all of the bullies are dead. The last one pleads for her life, uncomprehending, before she is gunned down. It's shocking, that swift transformation, the horrible arc from play-bully to real, dead, kids. The juxtaposition is meant to slap you hard and that it does. We see, in the starkest of terms, the connection between child play-acting, mimicking adult behaviors to try them on, and the real thing.

Even the two kids who suicide stun. At first, the girl goes despairingly on in language any soul-tortured teen will recognise, showing her boyfriend how this is their only path. It's the romantic dream of a meaningful death, until they actually leap on camera. At the last, too-late moment, the boyfriend realises his mistake. It has the aura of realness that utterly drains any romance from it and shows the pointless futility, the instant surrender, starkly.

In another later scene, a group of girls have taken refuge in a lighthouse, nursing a now-wounded Nanahara (seen as a good guy by all the girls). They gather in the kitchen and are chattering away as fifteen year old girls will, bustling around the kitchen preparing lunch, rushing in, out and about the room. One of the girls is afraid of boys (who can blame her now?) and uses her weapon (poison) to try to kill Nanahara. But it all goes wrong and one of the girls dies instead. Fear flames on, bickering breaks out, names are called, tempers rise and soon the girls are making the kind of threats you'd expect. "You were never part of our group!" "Everyone thinks you're crazy!" "Ugly!" "Bitch!" Before you can blink, they've grabbed their guns and rifles and have opened fire. In a short gunfight, punctuated with girlish screams and cries, they're suddenly all dead. Again, the swift, sharp jump from kid-fight to gun-fight is stunning.

There's the class athlete, who is chased by the boy who loves her. He quickly moves from wanting to save her, to wanting to kiss her, to threatening to rape her. One of the stone-cold killer students stumbles in and kills him, then mortally wounds the athlete. She then is chased off and the athlete runs into the boy she loves, who doesn't love her. As she's dying, she asks, in the way a fifteen year old will, if he ever loved her and would he pretend to just until she dies. He then runs off and... well, let's just say it's a grim ending for him and others, too.

One group of boys, clearly meant to be the tech geeks and gamers, launch a plan to subvert the game and survive. But when they run into the boy stone-cold killer, their gamer macho disappears in a hail of bullets. Again, the juxtaposition speaks: kids who have found an adultish competency in a kid's pursuit try to take it into the real world, with pointless results.

This, more than just the killings and deaths, is what powers the movie: the shock of seeing kids -- not the reverse-aged young adults of Hollywood or the too-smart little grown-ups we're used to over here -- acting and talking like age-appropriate kids, dumped into a cross between Lord of the Flies and The Most Dangerous Game. The stakes are the highest, the game unrelenting, the play brutal, success uncertain and fragile. Kids are the ultimate pawns of vengeful adults. This is one of the movie's themes.

There's also the impersonal hand of the soldiers and the glee with which Kitano the teacher taunts the kids as he announces new danger zones and recites the daily death toll. There's a sense that the kids are being punished, but as they all die but one, it's senseless. It serves no purpose, as the kids don't seem to be aware the game exists. The movie even mocks this game frame with a running death toll, listing the dead by number, name, gender and order of death, and giving a countdown of the number of kids remaining. It resembles a score graphic from ESPN or a reality show. But it's not cheesy; it only heightens the tension.

This film has several flaws. The production values are very high, almost Hollywood; the sets spectacularly believable. But the script and the plot have holes that are often either unexplained (like the kids not knowing about BR) or left for the viewer to puzzle out (like who tricked who, or who knew what, in the unclear ending). I can't really spoil the actual ending, as much as it needs explicating, but it will undoubtedly take the average viewer a couple of sittings and some discussion with others to untangle the complex and ill-depicted wrap-ups. There are even websites to explain it for you, that's how Japanese-indirect it is. Because of the speed of the pacing, the kids also have a tendency to blur, which is only exacerbated for many American viewers by the too-similar-looking Japanese cast in their school uniforms.

The actors in the movie are, for the most part, fantastic. Beat Takeshi brings a rumpled, off-hand cruelty to his character while somehow making him sympathetic. The student actors frequently make their characters real people with only moments on-screen. The kids who make it near to the end manage to convey their own youth realistically while still making us believe they have what it takes to survive that far. There's not a single actor who stands out badly; it's a sharp ensemble.

The American viewer isn't helped by subtitles (Awww...you can handle it; c'mon!) that stumble occasionally and then turn into Engrish of a particularly hallucinatory kind by the time of the "Requiems" that close the film. I'll let you find out for yourself; some are hilarious and some are baffling in the extreme. It even took me, a Japanophile, a couple of viewings and a lucky find of a transcript to figure some things out. But please don't let this annoyance stop you.

There's also more than a bit of "Japan-ness" in the movie that Americans not familiar with their culture may be confused by. In the early schoolroom scene, Kitano shows the students a videotape to explain things. It's a laugh-out-loud funny take-off on Japanese commercials and training films where a perky young woman, in camo short-shorts and cap with glitter sprinkled on her face, uses a sing-songy voice and mannequin movements to lay the BR out. You can see some vidcaps of this, and other scenes from the film here. The video parody is bizarre enough, but seeing Kitano clap along and encourage the students to join in doesn't make sense to Americans unless you know that this kind of group participation is the norm over there. The film is brutally parodying this part of the adult world as Kitano mocks the students.

[Side note: The Snowblood Apples site above is an excellent review site for some truly amazing Japanese and Korean movies. Well worth your time to browse around. Some of the movies mentioned are available at video stores locally. I know Midtown Video will soon be getting Suicide Circle, which opens with fifty-four Japanese schoolgirls in school uniforms throwing themselves in front of a train. It covers similar ground to BR in its study of the disconnect between the current generation of schoolkids and adults. Poker Industries has a gigantic library of Asian films well worth perusing, available at deep discount prices. Beware though: many are strange, sexual and violent.]

The web of relationships is another important part of the films -- those between students, between the various students and cliques, and between adults and kids. It is, in fact, the heart of the movie: adults unable to control lash out at the kids they've abused; the kids, not yet able to handle the adult world for real, ape the adult behaviors they've seen. We are led to believe that several people might have rigged the game at various stages for their own agendas -- revenge for the past, love, grudging respect. It's both complex and subtle, in the Japanese way. The climax and resolution are so open-ended that it's spawned discussion boards at several places.

There's been talk of an American remake, but somehow I doubt it. The world of Battle Royale is shocking to Japanese, but to Americans it is already our schools and our entertainment. A direct remake would be both impossible and would hit too close to home in our still post-Columbine world. What these kids do just doesn't happen in Japan; in America we see it all the time. In Japan, it's dystopia; in America, it's our world.

Besides, there would be the unavoidable tendency by Hollywood to glorify the violence on the one hand, to make the kids into attractive gangster toughs, twenty-somethings actors with impossibly buff bods playing them, or to turn it into a flat, preachy version of Lord of the Flies, with overblown music, limpid expressions, "important" themes and "serious" intent. There's a balance that's crucial in BR, one American viewers have to stretch to get; any Americanised remake would inevitably destroy that balance. (Compare Japan's Ringu with its American remake The Ring for an instructive lesson in our very differing cinematic methodologies.) Believe it or not, there's a modicum of humor in the movie as well, though it is often of the grimmest, blackest sort. This too is part of the balance I'm talking about, a slight leavening between the terrible parts serving to prevent them from blurring into one long, numbing murder spree.

The DVD I saw had some fascinating extras. There's a lot of behind the scenes vidcam stuff with the kids running around the set being the kids they are, as well as them interacting with the grandfatherly Fukasaku, even to staging a birthday party for him! There's some long takes as we watch the orchestra (all Western, oddly enough) play the classical soundtrack music in the recording studio. There's also some footage of stunt rehearsals. It's hard to follow, as it is all in Japanese, with Korean subtitles(!). You can also watch the "training video" by itself, which was a hoot, I must admit. And the enhanced gore that was added to the finished film for the "Special Version" is broken down into its component effects in a rapid-fire montage for effects buffs. Pretty neat to see, in a gory way.

Lastly, there is a Battle Royale II, amazingly enough. Made by the same production crew as the first, with some actors returning, it was nonetheless a disappointment. The tables are turned between kids and adults, and the film is much more explicitly political, which is part of the failure. There's a disruption of the adult/kid dynamic of BR; the kids fight back, instead of fighting each other, taking the movie from allegory to fantasy. Suddenly, an army of kids know all about the Battle Royale, where in the first movie it was a mystery to them. It was also more self-conscious of its cultural status and played to that to some extent, especially in a fashion awareness that served to undercut the message. Saddest of all, director Kinji Fukasaku died of bone cancer before completing the film; he foreswore treatment in order to make the movie, knowing it would kill him. His son made his feature-film debut by completing it.

If you're a media person reading this, on the lookout for the next thing to exploit, please go see Gus Van Sant's Elephant, which is now in sparse release, instead. It's a lightly fictionalised version of Columbine played deadpan and without glorifying anyone or anything. Violence erupts shockingly in the middle of the ordinary. The film doesn't push a viewpoint, letting the viewer make choices that can be unsettling. Which is the point. It's getting good, if tender, reviews. Elephant is right here, right now, current and accessible. Leave Battle Royale in the underground for the willing to discover.

Obviously, this film isn't for everyone. Maybe not even many, nor a few. If you are a parent yourself, it may shock too closely to your heart to stand. If you're overly PC or a bleeding liberal, it will offend on so many levels your head will spin. But those who don't mistake the violence for the point, who see the horror as the background of the kids' lives (several flashbacks in the film show the ugly home lives of some of the students, pointedly showing the hypocricy and abandonment of the adults), those who see the moments of fifteen year old behavior -- trying clumsily to cope with a violent, incomprehensible world without adult help -- as the foreground, will be bowled over by the film's message: parental neglect that doesn't prepare the kids for a violent world is flipped into violence in a neglectful world that no-one wants. Despite everything I've been saying, it's not a downbeat horror/death movie, but an entertaining, if gory, allegory of contemporary Japan. With the numerous caveats and warnings made above, I highly, highly recommend this movie.