FILM REVIEWS

BATTLE ROYALE

Starring Beat Takashi, Fujiwara Tatsuya, Yamamoto Taro, and Ando Masanobu.
Directed by Fukasaku Kinji, Rating , 2001.
DVD Reviewed By: Chris Beyond.

In Japan a law is passed in order to deal with the overcrowding of schools and the teenage delinquency problem. The Battle Royale act allows one class every year to be chosen at random to be sent to a deserted island where they are fitted with explosive collars and find out that they have three days to kill each other off with whatever weapons they are given at random (some kids are given machine guns, some grenades, and some are lucky enough to get binoculars, pot lids and paper fans) and by whatever means possible.

Think Lord Of The Flies meets Goonies meets Reservoir Dogs.

I was lucky enough to see this film on the big screen in London last year in a tiny, yet ornate, theatre. It's a good thing I did, because it seems that this film may never get an American distributor for theatrical release or possibly even DVD release (due to it's theme involving kids with guns). So Tartan Video in Europe decided to take matters into their own hands (and thus making a good business decision as far as I'm concerned) and just released a Region 0 version just for NTSC DVD players.

Basically U.S. DVD players run on a video system called NTSC while European video and DVD players run on the PAL system, I cannot explain this any further than that. So we ordered this through Amazon.com's UK version of the site and it arrived in about a week. Yay!

I can not ask you to hunt down this DVD and buy it enough. (Make sure that you get the version I just described for our U.S. readers.) If we rated films on a 1 to 10 scale it would definitely be a strong 10. It's not just because of the obvious violence involved. The camerawork, music score, acting, and cinematography couldn't be any better. There is actually a strange sweetness underneath all the carnage. All those old school rivalries you remember from school turn deadly in this situation with kids going after their own classmates from reasons like jocks versus nerds to ex-girlfriends facing up against the "new" girlfriends. (The tag-line of the film is "Could you kill your best friend?") Very strange stuff and it actually has a message, but it makes you wait until the end and if you blink you just might miss it, BUT DON'T YOU MISS IT! Seriously, you'll thank me for it later. Go for it! Here' a link to it! Run!

-- (Chris Beyond is the editor/creator of No-Fi "Magazine" and contributor to www.anxietyfilms.com)