Battle Royale!

[paul]

Hey Peeps,

While on vacation, I just saw this crazy movie called Battle Royale!

The basic plot is this... In the near future Japan school children are getting "out of control", like being late to class, disrespectful to teachers, whatever... So the solution that society comes up with is to take groups of them and send them to a tropical island for a only-one-left-standing super death match. Each kid is given a randomly chosen weapon (sicle, megaphone, big stick, frying pan lid, machinegun, whatever...) then turned loose to fight it out.

Only one survivor will be allowed to leave the island at the end. If they refuse to fight, they have necklaces that blow up after three days, so that's not really an option for them.

As the kids drop one by one, the movie provides helpful captions like "so and so dies, 29 kids left", just to help you keep the count. And, all of the action is set to a super intense classical/operatic score, which makes it even more badass when the cute japanese girls are chopping people's heads off.

The end gets a bit confusing, but hey, it's a japanese flick so that's to be expected. Other than that, I highly recommend it.

:sumo: :sumo: :sumo: :sumo: (I give it a rating of 4 out of 5)



P.S. bighead_42_1090, your avatar pic reminded me to post this review.

[slam]

i concur. very crazy film. it feels like the director was going for some sort of critical take on today's media obsession with reality television and violence, but that's more or less completely lost within the bloodfest.

quality!

[the Wolf]

I think the one girl from Kill Bill is in there too... The one with the huge morning-star...

[andikay]

Battle Royale is a great movie. I LOVE it, especially the part near the end where some girls have banded together and they get all paranoid and try to poison each other. Don't fuck with teenage girls!


And yes...Chiaki Kurayama (Go-Go from Kill Bill) is indeed in Battle Royale. She was also in Ju-On.

[larryhead]

That movie was so over-the-top weird... only in Japan. :)

Anyone see "Audition"? That's another bizarre one.. not as good though IMO.

[hasslehound]

Cool. I was trying to remember the film title Battle Royale the other day... I have seen it and it is cool.

[mrjohnchimpo]

i just watched it today off netflix. faaaanntastic!

apparently there is a sequel set three years after the events in the first one, and Shuya heads up some sort of terrorist organization. looks pretty cool.

this website looks like it's got a lot of info, for those interested:

http://www.battleroyalefilm.net/

[Simolean2]

wow its on netflix WOOT time to que it up hehe sounds like fun!

[mrjohnchimpo]

just saw the second one. not as good as the first, but still freaking pretty awesome.

[Hans Brix]

I can recommend some other similar stuff if you guys liked this.


OLDBOY (One film in Chan-Wook Park's trilogy of films focusing on Vengeance, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is the more famous one you may have heard of)

Versus (Samurai/Yakuza Zombie movie!)

The Returner (Japan's answer to the matrix)

Zatoichi (The new version or the old, new one has Beat Takeshi in it, excellent!)


Hardboiled (Chow-Yun Fat at his best, one of my favorite action movies of all time, ending hospital scene has one of the most amazing "single-shot" scenes ever made)

The Killer (another Chow-Yun Fat classic, excellent story of a hitman)

Ong-Bak (this guy is the new Jackie Chan, amazing Muy Thai fighting, and he does all of his own stunts, that put others to shame.)

Gozu (described as Yakuza Horror, it's a really neat, but freaked out story. Takeshi Miike film.)

Ichi the Killer ( Not for the fient of heart, another Takeshi Miike movie, very violent, but cool none the less.)




That list should do you guys for now. :-D

[mrjohnchimpo]

i've seen ichi. it's fucked up. ong bak is on the top of my queue now. i totally had forgotten about it.