Battle Royale (2000)

I don't remember who told me or where I read it, but quite some time ago I found out that Battle Royale (Japanese: バトル・ロワイヤル Batoru Rowaiaru) is one of Quentin Tarantino's favourite films so I decided to check it out. 

At the beginning of the 21st Century, Japan is in chaos as unemployment is an all-time high, and kids are boycotting school and becoming more and more violent. For this reason, the government decides to introduce a new measure, the Battle Royale Act, overseen by former teacher Kitano (Takeshi Kitano), which consists in randomly picking a school class to be taken to a deserted island where the students will be forced to fight each other to death until only one remains. If they refuse to follow the rules or participate, the special collar they were forced to wear will explode and kill them.

I know what you are thinking, isn't that basically the plot to The Hunger Games? Well, it is as The Hunger Games is basically a rip-off of Battle Royale. There's one huge difference between the two though, the execution. It is way better in the popular series starring Jennifer Lawrence. The problem with this film is that the main plot isn't properly developed and having subplots interrupting the main storyline every 5 minutes, if not more often, is annoying, distracting and really ruins the film's pacing.

Since there are so many subplots, there's no time to develop all the characters --only a few get some development, but even they don't have a lot of depth-- which basically results in not caring one bit when a character was killed --and it's pretty annoying as the film shows every single student die That's like 40 death nobody cares about. The characterization is very little as well, with a majority of the characters being stereotypes. I did, however, care for one of the characters, Kawana, a mysterious tough guy who eventually helps the two main characters. I didn't really care about them though.

Toei Company

There are, on the other hand, some pretty good performances, the standout obviously being Takeshi Kitano. He plays a very underdeveloped character, Kitano, the teacher who leads the operation of surveillance of the "game". He brilliantly portrays the character's sadistic and yet melancholic spirit while also bringing some humour to the film.

As for the horror, I don't think Battle Royale does qualify as a horror movie. Sure, there's plenty of violence and blood but the problem is that it doesn't look very realistic, cartoonish would be the perfect word to describe it, and for that reason, it's never scary. It does work as a decent action flick though.

Still, there's something I really liked about Battle Royale. It's the fact that it's rich in themes --trust, loyalty, selfishness, friendship and love-- and they are handled quite well.