So this week
marks the big debut of the Hunger Games movie, a film which, if my
Facebook feed is any indication, is insanely popular. But before the
Hunger Games came along, there was another book/movie combo about
teenagers brutally slaughtering each other, a Japanese franchise with a
cultish following: Battle Royale. And guess what?
It’s coming out on
(legal) DVD and BluRay! (The screenshots here are from the grainy and
poorly translated copy that I bought when I lived in Japan, so yeah, I
probably need to upgrade.)
In a lot of ways, BR and the Hunger Games
are very similar. Both are about teenagers forced to brutally slaughter
one another at the whims of a strange and sadistic government. Both
follow a pair of potential love interests clinging to the hope that they
can subvert the rules and both get out alive. Both have themes of trust
versus uncertainty and man’s inhumanity to man. But that’s where the
similarities end... [More pics and the original trailer after the jump...]
Pass.
While Hunger Games is PG, Battle Royale will never be
anything less than rated R. It is gory and violent. Sure, its violence
has a message—albeit one that is much more convoluted in film than it is
in the book. But at its core, Battle Royale just enjoys celebrating the
many graphic ways that artificial blood can be sprayed from a
teenager’s body. The acting is melodramatic and cheesy, something that
only adds to the effect. BR also takes place not in a distant future,
but in a dark parallel present, a Japan in which unruly youths and
failing morals led to an apathetic and violent society.
I can’t
speak for the movie, but in the book, the Hunger Games spends the first
third in a confusion of pretty dresses, public interviews, and decadent
meals as the Tributes prepare for the Arena. BR doesn’t bother. The
movie kicks off with a shot of last year’s winner, then moves directly
onto the bus that’s currently driving a 9th grade class to their deaths.
You know things have really gone wrong when the bus’s adorable,
uniformed hostess suddenly turns around in a gas mask and bashes a
student on the head.
Cute girls will kill you.
Deaths start fast and furious, with two students
gone before the end of the instructional video (led by Oneesan or Big
Sister, an energetic and adorable parody of the type of enthusiastic
girl that hosts children’s programming in Japan). There’s no fancy arena
in BR; instead, the government drops the kids on an evacuated island,
complete with all the junk the residents left behind. Students are
fitted with neck collars that track their movements and also explode.
The only rule is that only one can come out alive, and after three days,
if there is more than one student living, everyone dies.
Kiriyama is a big fan of The Crow
Part of
the genius of Battle Royale the book is its confusion over the main
character. Early on, it could be any one of a handful of characters,
some good and some evil. It eventually settles on one boy as the
likeliest and most heroic protagonist… only to have him abruptly
slaughtered a few pages later. It’s an excellent device that keeps you
guessing and lets you know that no one is sacred. Sadly, it’s kind of
impossible to achieve that same effect in film. (Not having a clear
protagonist in film makes it nearly impossible for the audience to
engage in the plot, kind of the opposite of the effect it had in the
book. See: the Phantom Menace.) So we spend much of the movie following
Shuya Nanahara and his best friend’s crush, Noriko Nakagawa. They’re
nice kids, but not very well suited to a survival situation, so they end
up kind of muddling through and surviving more by luck than anything
else.
As villains go, you’re spoiled for choice. There’s Kitano, the
class’s former teacher and current leader of the games, but he’s more
of a menacing background presence and ultimately kind of sad. (He’s
played by famous Japanese comedian Beat Takeshi.)
Then there’s Kiriyama,
a transfer student (read: volunteer for the games) who is essentially
an unstoppable killing machine. He’s terrifying because he just keeps
coming, no matter what you do to him. ( In the book he was an original
member of the class rather than a transfer student, a boy who suffered a
brain injury while still in his mother’s womb and lost his ability to
empathize. He bases his decision on whether to help the others escape or
whether to play the game on the flip of a coin.) He doesn't speak a
single word in the entire movie, something that just amplifies his
menace.
Then there’s my personal favorite villain, Mitsuko. Mitsuko was
the leader of the mean-girl clique in the class, a pretty and popular
girl who got all the guys. It’s clear she has self-esteem issues (the
book slowly unravels a long history of abuse, although the movie doesn’t
bother) and sees winning the game as her best chance of redemption.
She’s terrifying because of her skill at manipulation, and fun to watch
because of her cool and ruthless detachment. I don’t want to give away
too much, but at one point you get awesome villain-on-villain action.
Mitsuko likes to be creepy
Once the Battle begins, the story unfolds in a series of vignettes,
mostly of deaths or dealing with deaths or walking around trying to
avoid deaths. The themes of trust and distrust are played out again and
again, but none more poignantly than in the lighthouse scene. In the
lighthouse, we find 5 BFF girls who have managed to find one another and
hole up in what are essentially the most luxurious digs on the island.
Unfortunately, the intrusion of an outsider causes one of them to panic,
and in an ill-advised attempt at self defense, she accidentally kills
one of her friends. In the resulting panic, each of the girls blames the
others, and they quickly turn on each other. It goes from friendly
lunch to grisly bloodbath in the blink of an eye. It’s a great scene and
a nice little microcosm of the entire movie.
Hunger Games? Who has time to eat?
One of the best and
most popular characters in the entire movie is Takako Chigusa, the
class’s track star. (You might recognize her. Chiaki Kuriyama also
played schoolgirl assassin Gogo Yubari in Kill Bill. I’ve read that
Tarantino decided he needed her after seeing her in BR.) She’s cute and
athletic, with the adorable habit of chatting with God. She’s remarkable
for the fact that in the space of about a minute, she perpetrates what
is arguably the grisliest murder in the entire movie, and just seconds
later dies the saddest and most heart-wrenching death in the film. She
kills a classmate by first repeatedly stabbing him in the junk, and then
stabbing him over and over in the chest. In her defense, he did just
threaten to rape her, and she did give him lots of opportunity to go on
his way. (In the book, he actually attempts to rape her before she
fights back.) And yet, even though she brutally kills this guy, a few
seconds later I find myself actually crying over her death and
unrequited love. There just plain isn’t enough Chigusa in this movie.
Bloody Blu-Ray package
I won’t give away the ending—because it’s too much fun—but I will say
that before the conclusion of the film you have seen more pointless
violence than a Tarantino film and more cheeseball acting than a high
school musical. It is definitely not to be missed. I can’t say that if
you are a huge Hunger Games fan that you’ll love this movie. I can’t say
that if you hate the Hunger Games you’ll love this film. I will say
that if you enjoy campy violence, movies about not trusting the
government, or just watching girls in school uniforms walk around with
guns, you’ll probably enjoy this movie. And, if you want something more
thought provoking, try the book. It has the same gratuitous violence,
but it actually has a strong and intelligent message about the dangers
of being too obedient and too trusting of authority.
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