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IMDb Movie of the Day
21st century tension in Japan finds youth rebelling against their parents and schools, and a beleaguered government ready to enact a radical new measure: the Battle Royale Act Oversee. It mandates that a randomly selected class of middle-school students be taken to a deserted island and forced to fight to the death, with only the last student standing allowed to leave. As contestants, each student is rationed a supply/weapons kit and outfitted with an electronic dog collar that will explode if improperly removed. Furthermore, if more than one student is alive after the three-day time limit, they'll all be killed by remote control. The last student isn't to be considered a survivor; he or she exists as an example of the government's dedication to combating dissent among the young. That's the backstory of Battle Royale, the penultimate film by revered director Kinji Fukasaku. Based on the novel by Koushun Takami, Battle Royale was an instant smash in Japan, second only to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon in the amount of media and popular attention it received; teenagers slept outside theaters in the days before its release, and the Liberal Democrat Party's concentrated effort to ban the work ultimately failed. There was (and still is) a major reaction against the depiction of teen-on-teen violence, which has been characterized as commentary on the regimented Japanese education system. Distributor Toei's strict selling terms, combined with nervous U.S. distributors, have relegated Battle Royale to import-only DVD status, but it's so worth tracking down. You might only recognize Beat Takeshi and Chiaki Kuriyama in the cast, but it's the faces you've never seen before that will haunt you. - Arno Kazarian (
more) (Movie of the Day Archive)
If you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend it. Vicious but brilliant.
21st century tension in Japan finds youth rebelling against their parents and schools, and a beleaguered government ready to enact a radical new measure: the Battle Royale Act Oversee. It mandates that a randomly selected class of middle-school students be taken to a deserted island and forced to fight to the death, with only the last student standing allowed to leave. As contestants, each student is rationed a supply/weapons kit and outfitted with an electronic dog collar that will explode if improperly removed. Furthermore, if more than one student is alive after the three-day time limit, they'll all be killed by remote control. The last student isn't to be considered a survivor; he or she exists as an example of the government's dedication to combating dissent among the young. That's the backstory of Battle Royale, the penultimate film by revered director Kinji Fukasaku. Based on the novel by Koushun Takami, Battle Royale was an instant smash in Japan, second only to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon in the amount of media and popular attention it received; teenagers slept outside theaters in the days before its release, and the Liberal Democrat Party's concentrated effort to ban the work ultimately failed. There was (and still is) a major reaction against the depiction of teen-on-teen violence, which has been characterized as commentary on the regimented Japanese education system. Distributor Toei's strict selling terms, combined with nervous U.S. distributors, have relegated Battle Royale to import-only DVD status, but it's so worth tracking down. You might only recognize Beat Takeshi and Chiaki Kuriyama in the cast, but it's the faces you've never seen before that will haunt you. - Arno Kazarian (more) (Movie of the Day Archive)If you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend it. Vicious but brilliant.