One thing that really gets on my nerves as an American is when people whine about our entertainment being violent and immature. I'm not going to deny that obviously but the part that infuriates me is people say it as if America's the only one producing violent and shallow entertainment. In response, I'd like to review one of my favorite eastern films, Battle Royale.
The movie begins by announcing that Japan's economy isn't doing so well and the government passed a law called the Millennium Educational Reform Act, otherwise known as the BR act. The way the act works is by bringing junior high school kids to an island and have them relentlessly slaughter each other. I'm not exactly a political scientist but I fail to see how kids killing each other can help the economy. Perhaps the reason was in the book, then cut from the movie. In the end it doesn't matter because kids kill each other and it's exciting to watch.
Allow me to explain the rules of Battle Royale. The objective is to kill everyone, last one standing wins. Each of them has a neck brace and a three day time limit. If there is more than one contested alive by the end of the three day time limit, all the neck braces explode and no one wins. One thing mostn00bs paranoid student would try to do is sit on their ass in one area and wait for someone to run past so they can beat them to death in various ways(see: camping). To prevent this, there will be certain time frames in which certain areas of the island become dead zones. If someone stands in that area for two long, their neck brace blows their face clean off right then and there. These deadzones, toppled with a three day time limit really makes people haul ass, therefore makes the game far more interesting. Each student gets a bag full of goodies, some useful, others are not.
In our particular case, the battle field is an island 10 Kilometers around with 40 students competing for their life. Initially it was more but natural selection took them out before the game began. Battle Royale has some rather interesting characters and a surprising amount of character development for such a movie. Some have secret crushes, others stimulate some good old anxty middle-school drama when weapons are involved, while some of them desperately try to get laid before the cold hands of death claims their hopeless soul. There are definitely more weapons than you may expect. Some of them are guns, swords, and even a paper fan which would have been more than helpful in the Smash Bros franchise, but not in a game like this.
These kids can be astonishingly aggressive when they're up against several other kids and time itself. Many of the fights are done with great style. Allow me to explain: steeling some naive girl's Taser; threatening her with it, then hacking away at her neck with an ax brings me back to the days of Condemned. Machine gunning a group of people for epic loot would make anyone's day, especially the viewer's. There are a few more interesting deaths but I don't feel like spoiling the movie. Perhaps the best parts of the movie are when people work together in order to increase their odds of winning, but you can almost feel the fear in their hearts knowing that they'll have to turn on each other in the end. It seems like the larger a group gets, the more likely someone is aloud to get away with betraying them. Events such as poisoning food to kill a member is a good recipe for the entire team turning on one another. It's one of those movies where you think to yourself, ?can't get any cooler than this? leading up to it getting cooler, and consistently doing so.
The movie does have it's flaws. The dialog and acting is mediocre but it's excused for the sake of cheep humor, but some of it is truly retarded. ?These are our new students, be nice to them? says Kitano right before entering the tournament. ?You ok?? someone ask another guy with an ax lodged in his cranium. The translations contain many spelling mistakes, but think about what that means. I, defcon 1, the guy who can't spell correctly after running his shit through 4 spell checkers caught quite a few, so chances are that there are a lot more errors than meets this reviewer's eyes. Although the movie's target is gore, the blood has the viscosity of vegetable oil. In other words, it's too fake.
Actors, dialog, grammar errors, and cheesy gore effects are scattered throughout the movie but the flaws hardly damage it. The reason why such flaws don't damage the movie is because it doesn't want to be taken too seriously. The reason to watch this movie is to see kids kill each other in several different ways with several different weapons and cheer for the one you put your money on. It's the kind of film best watched with your buddies while making jokes about the content and simotaniously reading the translations. It's certainly one of my favorite movies of all time, but then again I enjoyed games that had unnecessary immature content. As for a recommendation, I say you haven't lived until you've seen Battle Royale.
The movie begins by announcing that Japan's economy isn't doing so well and the government passed a law called the Millennium Educational Reform Act, otherwise known as the BR act. The way the act works is by bringing junior high school kids to an island and have them relentlessly slaughter each other. I'm not exactly a political scientist but I fail to see how kids killing each other can help the economy. Perhaps the reason was in the book, then cut from the movie. In the end it doesn't matter because kids kill each other and it's exciting to watch.
Allow me to explain the rules of Battle Royale. The objective is to kill everyone, last one standing wins. Each of them has a neck brace and a three day time limit. If there is more than one contested alive by the end of the three day time limit, all the neck braces explode and no one wins. One thing most
In our particular case, the battle field is an island 10 Kilometers around with 40 students competing for their life. Initially it was more but natural selection took them out before the game began. Battle Royale has some rather interesting characters and a surprising amount of character development for such a movie. Some have secret crushes, others stimulate some good old anxty middle-school drama when weapons are involved, while some of them desperately try to get laid before the cold hands of death claims their hopeless soul. There are definitely more weapons than you may expect. Some of them are guns, swords, and even a paper fan which would have been more than helpful in the Smash Bros franchise, but not in a game like this.
These kids can be astonishingly aggressive when they're up against several other kids and time itself. Many of the fights are done with great style. Allow me to explain: steeling some naive girl's Taser; threatening her with it, then hacking away at her neck with an ax brings me back to the days of Condemned. Machine gunning a group of people for epic loot would make anyone's day, especially the viewer's. There are a few more interesting deaths but I don't feel like spoiling the movie. Perhaps the best parts of the movie are when people work together in order to increase their odds of winning, but you can almost feel the fear in their hearts knowing that they'll have to turn on each other in the end. It seems like the larger a group gets, the more likely someone is aloud to get away with betraying them. Events such as poisoning food to kill a member is a good recipe for the entire team turning on one another. It's one of those movies where you think to yourself, ?can't get any cooler than this? leading up to it getting cooler, and consistently doing so.
The movie does have it's flaws. The dialog and acting is mediocre but it's excused for the sake of cheep humor, but some of it is truly retarded. ?These are our new students, be nice to them? says Kitano right before entering the tournament. ?You ok?? someone ask another guy with an ax lodged in his cranium. The translations contain many spelling mistakes, but think about what that means. I, defcon 1, the guy who can't spell correctly after running his shit through 4 spell checkers caught quite a few, so chances are that there are a lot more errors than meets this reviewer's eyes. Although the movie's target is gore, the blood has the viscosity of vegetable oil. In other words, it's too fake.
Actors, dialog, grammar errors, and cheesy gore effects are scattered throughout the movie but the flaws hardly damage it. The reason why such flaws don't damage the movie is because it doesn't want to be taken too seriously. The reason to watch this movie is to see kids kill each other in several different ways with several different weapons and cheer for the one you put your money on. It's the kind of film best watched with your buddies while making jokes about the content and simotaniously reading the translations. It's certainly one of my favorite movies of all time, but then again I enjoyed games that had unnecessary immature content. As for a recommendation, I say you haven't lived until you've seen Battle Royale.
