Having been cooped up the past few days due to root canals, pain killers, and sickness, I had an opportunity to hit some items on my movie watch list. The first of which was Battle Royale.

Battle Royale is a fairly standard "battle survival games" type story. In some dystopian alter-verse, a bus load of middle schoolers is shipped off to an uninhabited island and tossed out into the unforgiving wild with the given goal of being the only survivor by the end of three days. It covers the general theme of how extreme situations can cause people to do things they never would have otherwise. You've seen this story plenty of times over in things such as Lord of the Flies, Hunger Games, and probably a couple dozen sitcom plots. Only, this time it's in Japan and if more than one person comes out alive, everybody dies.

Not knowing what the plot really was, I went in thinking that this was going to be in the vein of Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl or Hobo with a Shotgun: a campy, slasher gore film that wasn't anything to be taken too seriously. What I got instead was a very well thought out and well put together movie that happened to have a cliche plot line. There were some bits that were a little bit over the top, but the theme was definitely played very seriously.

At the beginning of the movie, there are some 42 entrants in these gory games and, while most don't receive much in the line of attention when they're killed off, some groups and individuals get their own little arcs. One group of girls has holed themselves up in a lighthouse on one of the island's coasts. There's a group of nerds who find themselves a shack and, thanks to the power of brains and hacking, wreak havok upon their captor's via electronic warfare while attempting to sneak in a homemade bomb. Yet another girl goes rogue on her own, killing without hesitation. She's on her period, apparently, so perhaps it's semi-justified. Of course, there's the two protagonists (one of whom is the actor for Light Yagami in the live action Death Note movie) who find themselves at the mercy of one of the game's previous winners.

It's the way that the movie explores the dynamics of these groups/individuals and how they attempt to cope with the situation (or don't) that make this movie so intriguing. Friends are enemies and enemies just might be friends. Trust is an item best given out carefully, if indeed at all. The main characters interface with most all of these circles of individuals to varying degrees and effect, and provides for the main drive of the plot narrative.

And, as a quick note, I didn't have the usual issues I have with Japanese live action movies with this film. I can't quite put my finger on it, but their cinematography language is different than what you see in the usual blockbusters. Often, it seems as if their films are shot in cheap equipment, poorly acted, and perhaps shot by amateurs. BR has none of these issues, is well shot, edited, and acted.

As stated before, I was not really expecting much of this movie, but am so glad I went in with an open mind and watched it. It was highly entertaining and a great way to spend a lortab addled evening.

Rating: 5/5