Review of Battle Royale (2000) by Frances H — 27 Jun 2016
How anyone could take this movie seriously is a joke. It's more like the 50s Godzilla movies out of Japan than anything else, which makes it just as hilarious today. How anyone could call this a melodrama is beyond me, because what it is is a farce, that doesn't even make sense from the beginning.
That this "game" could be an effective way of controlling young people is ludicrous. The movie shows the media making a big deal of the winner of one of these contests, and the threat might be effective, except that the kids in the bus going to be the next participants seem to never have heard of it and find the idea outrageous.
How are all the kids in Japan kept from knowing what is going on, if it's all over the media, as the beginning suggests. Although this flick pre-dates The Hunger Games, the author used the theme a great deal better.
In the books , the games are a form of torture for the outlying districts that rebelled against the central government, not to control school kids, who would just rebel more at knowing what might randomly be ahead of them.
But everything in this flick is sooooo bad, that it's funny, from the fake way the kids die, to the very poor use of classical music at weird and untimely moments, to the nonsensical actions of everybody involved.
Seeing this film after seeing The Hunger Games trilogy just makes this film funnier than ever in contrast.This movie isn't dark, it's just comedic in its disastrous attempt to be serious. Kurosawa mist be rolling over in his grave.
This review of Battle Royale (2000) was written by Frances H on 27 Jun 2016.
Battle Royale has generally received very positive reviews.
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