Battle Royale

Not in the mood for movies, and in fact, Saturday was kind of a bummer for me until I got my Netflix discs. At the recommendation of a coworker, I watched “Battle Royale” and I was significantly impressed by this modern day version of “Lord of the Flies.” Now, we can’t see every movie that comes out or we will never do anything else with our lives … and it’s true that a lot of great things fly under the radar or we just ignore it (the summer of the great Star Wars floppogy I missed “Batman Begins” because I was just too annoyed to go back to a movie theater for six months.)

Battle Royale is the story of Japan, after an economic collapse, loses control of the youth of the country. In order to regain it, classes are taken to an island, fixed with exploding collars around their necks, and told that in 3 days only one will survive … or they will all die. Sure, there is a lot of gratuitous violence, but not the “Saw” movie kind. In fact, I couldn’t think of a scene in the film that seemed over the top.



From the beginning to the end of the film we seem to know what is going to happen, and yet the ending is confusing (if not made more so by the added “dreams” of specific characters as a coda.) But, what I can say is that I wasn’t bored.