Battle Royale

[Pete B6K]

Just saw Battle Royale the other day after a friend's recommendation. Thought it was great.

The best way I can descibe it is a cross between Lord of the Flies and Survivor.  As part of a futuristic Japanese law, a class of teenagers is kidnapped and set loose on an island with a weapon each, after being told that they must fight to the death and in 3 days the winner will be allowed to leave.

And I was surprised to find that the director was 70 when he made it. It really comes across like the debut of a talented, enthusiastic, fresh young director.  I've always suffered from the prejudice that old directors make uncontroversial regular films.

Has anyone else seen it?

Pete

"Here's your list of friends in the order they died." - Kitano, the teacher, in one of his 6-hourly updates to the children over the island's loudspeakers.

[Neville]

OK movie, but I expected more. Not that the movie is bad, it is just that the constant changes of tone left me a bit confused. What did the movie really wanted to achieve? I enjoyed it anyway, and my favourite scene is the one with that bad guy using a samurai sword with that nerd who had been given the bullet proof vest.

[Brian Ringler]

I got the region 1 dvd from poker industries awhile back. I thought it was a good movie.  Actually saw someone at the bar where I live (well in the town I live in, I don't live in a bar) that had a battle royale t-shirt.  He and I were both shocked that someone else in a town of 9000 actually knew of that movie.

[Fearless Freep]

The "Friday Night Society" has a review of Battle Royal that's pretty good

[lester1/2jr]

I saw it on a vcd that had 2 other movies on it.  It was apparently very contraversial in Japan.

[Mofo Rising]

lester1/2jr wrote:
>
> I saw it on a vcd that had 2 other movies on it.  It was
> apparently very contraversial in Japan.

Also hugely succesful in Japan.

I bought a DVD off of eBay, but it had huge imperfections that looked like waterspots on it.  I was only able to watch about half of it.  It wasn't as great as I hoped, but I didn't get to finish.  I was thinking it would be really disturbing, but once you've read LORD OF THE FLIES you know what to expect.

I'm waiting for somebody to release it in the U.S..  That's currently slated to happen never.  (Commercial suicide.)

[StatCat]

I saw it recently myself its pretty good, entertaining for the most part. I like the concept but a few parts left me confused and some stuff was unbelievable. Theres actually a really nice dvd out there (I have a copy from it)

[indianasmith]

I finally got around to watching this - the Director's Cut DVD version - tonight.  A very interesting and well done film; neither as good nor as bad as I was expecting, but impossible to step away from!  Some of the scenes are almost comical, others are pretty disturbing.  Definitely worth viewing if you have never seen it!

[retrorussell]

Great flick.  One of my favorite scenes is when the hormonal kid comes onto the tough bad girl and she rejects his advances.  He grazes her face with a crossbow bolt and  she goes completely bad-@$$ on him and stabs him in the d*ck.

I also like the girl in the instruction video, cheerfully informing the students that they must kill or be killed.

[Chainsawmidget]

I own it.  It's a very entertaining movie, but the manga it's based on is much better (and has a completley different director for the program that's much less symapthetic  and more twisted.)

[The Burgomaster]

I bought the DVD several years ago from HK Flix, a website that I now understand no longer exists.  It was a great source of DVDs and they often offered several versions of movies (for example, a U.S. release version, a German release version, a Hong Kong release version).  In general, the movies were a bit pricey, but I bought a few movies that weren't available from US. distributors at the time.

[molokai cargo]

wasnt this the inspiration for the Hunger Games ;)

[bob]

this is a fantastic film 

[Leah]

One of my favorite film, in my top 10!