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I was really looking forward to Battle Royale, I figured it would be a great satire on Big Brother culture, and an interesting, moralistic and necessary attack on such shows as Survivor. Ultimately, Battle Royale is nothing of the sort, and I hesitate at labelling this fiasco a 'horror film', as it has nothing approaching tension, suspense or scares. Instead, the film is simply just one heavy-handed document of random slaughter. Who will survive? What will be left of them? Who cares when the director doesn't even bother to draw out one single character for us to care about!
With no characterisation and an undeniably vile plot (young kids are dumped on an island and asked to kill one another until only one is left, or else face a messy death due to a detonator strapped around their neck which is guaranteed to eventually explode) Battle Royale simply offends. And by that, I mean that it offends the intelligence... after all, I am hard pressed to think that any half intelligent adult would think that a worthwhile cinematic experience would be had by watching a group of adolescents slaughter each other, almost non-stop for nearly two hours. I felt offended by the film makers assumption that I would somehow, personally, feel that this would be valuable to me.
No doubt you are wondering if the film has any plus points. Well, my answer to that is going to be short. Violent Cop himself, Beat Takeshi, is in fine form as the vicious (and possible paedophilic) schoolteacher who takes command of the 'Battle Royale' itself. There is at least one interesting character (sadly this is down to a fantastic performance by the actress and not the zero amount of characterisation which is given to her fictional persona) in the shape of a scythe wielding vixen who has gone totally bananas. Unfortunately she disappears from the fray far too soon at the hands of the film's real villain - a pathetic gun happy Columbine reject (clad in a long black coat for maximum controversy. Yawn) with a punk rocker hair do. These are the only two half-decent things about this film. Pretty much everything else is just done for the sake of disgust or to elicit some sort of outrage (from castrated adolescents to a scene where Takeshi throws a knife into a child's forehead).
Is this what the genre has come to? Has horror once and for all degenerated into mindless, overwrought, loud, noisy and deeply unpleasant junk like this? If so, then the gore crowd can finally celebrate... they got their way. Let's hail the web pages that I have personally criticised in the past (they know who they are). They finally won. Who needs script, characterisation, suspense, ethics, intelligence or actual decent film making when you can have a few kids running around a desolate island trying to chop or shoot one another to death?
Battle Royale is no Audition (the other controversial Japanese horror film released in the UK this year, and which turned out to be a necessary evil in an attempt to display the chauvinistic zenith which has plagued Japanese culture for far too long). Battle Royale is no Lord of the Flies either - although it tries to be. No, Battle Royale, in spite of some sloppy satire, has no underlying morals. Any reading that the film tries to present a picture of an older generation trying to free itself from the threat of an uncontrollable youth is neither addressed nor brought to the surface. Instead, it is used as an excuse. Nothing more and nothing less than an excuse to plod out one of the most plotless films I have ever sat through.
The director obviously wanted controversy. Well, he got it - and he got in the most pathetic manner of all: can't do the old trick of slaughtering an animal on screen or slicing up a naked lady (that's all been done now, to the cheers of the ghouls that I was speaking off earlier)? Then why not pick on kids? Show some kids killing each other... that will be sure to cause some controversy and get the movie a little free publicity. Well it's one thing for The Daily Mail to cry outrage and for a seasoned horror film viewer such as myself to see Battle Royale for what it really is - one huge plan to elicit controversy and bums on seats as a result. It's just controversy for the sake of it, a bit like Eminem really.
However, the only outrage this film provokes is in just how carefully conceited and manipulative the whole thing turns out to be. Ultimately this is only recommended for young teenage males who think that movies such as The Burning are masterpieces of cinema.
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