“Could you kill your best friend?” - Tagline

Yes you could. In a dystopian future, when society was on the verge of collapse, the Japanese government passed the Millennium Reform School Act to respond. Japan was living a depression with huge employment and inflation with the adults torn into chaos. The youth replied by extraordinary violence, delinquency and unparalleled absenteeism.

The MRA is principally this: A group of high school students are chosen at random, kidnapped and shipped to an island where they have three days to stay alive and kill everyone else. If more than one student is alive, they all die by default. All this sounds a bit unbelievable in today’s world but Fukasaku along with his classmates was drafted in World War II when he was a ninth grader himself. And who knows who they’ll draft in the next world war?

It’s hard to know when you’re supposed to laugh or cry in Battle Royale. The doomed characters are basically all children despite their fake courage and strategy. And it mostly takes one bullet or one stab to kill them. The violence is senseless, bloody and constant. Battle Royale drugs the viewer by telling him/her this story in the garb of science fiction and while the premise isn’t completely plausible, it sends the viewer in a strange surreal place where he knows this isn’t real but can’t help being unsettled or alarmed at the insanity of the situations and the stupidity of death. The social commentary is mostly on mute which is fine because Clockwork Orange was filmed thirty years ago.

This is as close today’s youth can have to A Clockwork Orange and there’s nothing wrong with that. A cold, hard and intense action thriller, BR is for anyone who can stomach blood. Younger audiences that won’t go on retarded murderous rampages or shoot their classmates or be easily depressed should be the first to check this out. Rumours of an American remake (ala Ringu) are floating with a sequel releasing in July.