The 2000 Japanese cult film Battle Royale can’t even muster the inventiveness of a generic YA nail-biter

Movie review—Battle Royale (2000)

A bunch of teenagers are dropped into a remote outpost and forced to do battle to survive. Does the scenario of this 2000 Japanese movie sound familiar?

Unlike The Hunger Games, though, this film—originally a novle—has attained cult-movie status. Therefore, I figured, Battle Royale would be better than the Hollywood product that came after.

Battle Royale does start off slightly better than The Hunger Games. For one thing, the violence starts early. The film doesn’t bother with set-up or back-story, wisely figuring we don’t give a shit. Suddenly, 40 young people are trying to kill each other with bazookas and scimitars.

However, it soon becomes clear that what seems like narrative expediency is an early indicator that the filmmakers don’t have a fucking clue.

Nothing makes sense in this movie. Having not read the book, I don’t know if the gaps are filled in. But Battle Royale is full of the kind of behaviour that no relatively normal human would ever engage in, not even in a cult film.

Blood and gore, but no redemption

I mentioned that no real reason is given for the central conceit. This isn’t entirely true; near the beginning of the movie, the kids’ former teacher mentions something about how they do not respect adults. However, this is the only reference to any such behaviour. And anyway, this flat-out exposition doesn’t jibe with what anything else we see. Even in the flashbacks.

Oh, and those flashbacks! Not only are they sentimental and tedious, but they are endless. The filmmakers pile them on at the climax, too, as though in a last-ditch effort to derive some meaning out of the rest of the movie.

Even the violence isn’t redemptive. Battle Royale doesn’t shy away from a good Scanners-like head explosion or axe in the skull the way the ultra-squeamish and money-hungry Hunger Games flick does. But the blood and gore isn’t shocking or effective since we don’t give a tinker’s fart about the characters.

Whatever the problems The Hunger Games has, at the end of the day it still has Jennifer Lawrence. The actress brought character to the lifeless Katniss Everdeen, after all. But with the exception of veteran Takeshi Kitano (whose character also makes no sense), the performances are uniformly terrible. Yelling and screaming and bulging eyeballs rule the day. But not for a second do we believe any of these kids to be in any real danger.

Both movies wrap up in totally unsatisfying ways. The Hunger Games holds out its hand for money for a sequel. Battle Royale‘s end makes little sense in context of the rest of the movie. Teens killing teens, ho-hum.