Review of Battle Royale (2000) by Corrine T — 03 Jan 2013

A powerful, emotional idea, I was very intrigued by this only to be surprisingly disappointed. Every character was either too typical or just too dull to connect with. The villans of the story lacked any logical reason or depth to their sudden embracement for murdering others. This is seen especially with the mute, almost super villan who just happened to be the one who landed himself a SPAS-12 shotgun. He moves on to kill relentlessly without any type of emotional impact, all depth nonexistent, leaving nothing relatable or interesting.

The writing seemed well thought out and held much promise, but it was brought down by poor dialogue, in its best moments only achieving average quality. Yet even what could have been very emotional moments or even simplistic scenes that could have conveyed thousands of messages was brought down by very, very poor acting. The violence, which from what I had read about before viewing, was supposed to be one of the better parts of the movie, leading to supposed great action sequences and intensity. Instead, I found myself unfortunately chuckling at how unrealistic it all was. Even the reason provided in the beginning for this death arena was laughable.

There were a couple of good moments. The lead actor playing Shuya truly made you care, as well as a good performance by the teacher, Kitano. It was definitely not the worst movie I have ever seen, but its failure to take a very heavy, promising plot and expand upon it as well as create original, captivating characters was incredibly disappointing.