Battle

In the words of the main character in A Clockwork Orange, I don't mind "a bit of the old ultra-violence" here and there. I have Sin City and both the Kill Bills on DVD, so the film of Battle Royale seemed a sensible idea. I first watched it on Youtube, then downloaded a nicer Bittorrent version, and now I intend to buy the £18 super DVD mega-box-set-tron. The film has been described as a modern-day Lord of the Flies, but I disagree - Battle Royale isn't shite.

Battle Royale is set in Japan in the near future and probably a slightly different universe from our own. Unemployment has reached record levels and nearly a million students are boycotting school. Fearing the youth, the government pass the Educational Reform Act V, otherwise known as the BR act, or Battle Royale. In order to scare young people back into obedience, a randomly chosen class (selected by "impartial lottery" as their teacher explains") will be sent to an island each year, armed, and set free to kill each other. If the 40-odd students haven't wittled each other down to just one survivor by then, a necklace they are wearing will explode and kill them anyway.

Now, I realise this is a lot more relevant to people of my age, being forced to kill off your classmates and what not, but it's still a great film regardless of age. Some people decide to play the game and maybe settle previous scores while others commit suicide. A few try to find a way to either stop the game or find a way out without being killed. With 42 students at the start, and with the battle supposed to whittle them down to just 1, the kill count is high. Telling exactly how high would ruin the confusing end of the film.

Battle Royale is - funnily enough - very violent. The kids are given weapons ranging from a scythe or nunchucks to a pistol or an Uzi. Some have more creative weapons such as hand grenades or food poison, which implies you'd have to gain someone's trust before using it. But the violence is a required part of the film, rather than just showing off and being pointlessly gory as it can be in some others. The acting is generally good but I feel the translation in the subtitles is sometimes a little off. At one point, someone we thought was dead gets up and says "Yes! I survived thanks to my excellent bullet-proof vest!"
Would anyone actually say that? I suspect the original was more like - "Phew, glad I was wearing a bullet-proof vest" or something similar.

The film has three main "villains" - two of the students who decide to go nuts and butcher everyone, and their teacher who is following the progress of the game. These two students kill off half of the class by themselves in various creative and gory ways. As apparently often happens in Japanese films (as opposed to Hollywood) is that the ending isn't totally explained - you have to guess the explanation to one or two bits, though it helps if you've read the book. Which I am currently doing.
There is more to the film than perhaps first meets the eye. There is lots of very black humour and comments on various things, ranging from how adults see themselves to what people are capable of when "let loose" as it were. While at first we hate their teacher, later on things get more complicated and we realise maybe he isn't quite as evil as we first thought.
This film has shot into my Top 10 films with ease, and so I say this - WATCH IT. Now.
Just as with Borat, I refuse to give any film 10/10. So 9/10 is effectively the highest rating anything is going to get...