Perhaps not quite so internationally obscure now - nine years on - as it was when it was first released in Japan,
Battle Royale would have made a far more fitting final movie for director
Kinji Fukasaku instead of its lesser sequel three years later... which in fact his son Kenta polished off after the director's death at age 72.
You certainly couldn’t take style, content and inspiration any further a field from Fukasaku senior's earlier action-adventure romp
Legend Of 8 Samurai, nattered about in this blog two weeks ago.
So clear your frazzled silly-season brain. It’s a not-too-distant future. Japan is again a fascist state. An arbitrarily-chosen bus full of high school kids are knocked out with sleeping gas, kidnapped, then shipped on to an isolated island - where they’re informed by their embittered former teacher Kitano (
'Beat' Takeshi Kitano) that the only way they will leave said island is by killing all their classmates – or by ending up in a body-bag themselves.
In order to enforce this mandate, each student is shackled with an exploding collar, à la
Wedlock, and Kitano punctuates the students’ plight with a well-aimed penknife to one of the girl’s foreheads, thereby launching a battle for self-preservation.
Shuja (
Tatsuya Fujiwara, more recently the star in the live-action
Death Note franchise) and Noriko (
Aki Maeda; she’s appeared in both
Gamera and
Godzilla movies, did the voice of Yuki in the Studio Ghibli anime
The Cat Returns, and teamed up last year with
Kiichi Nakai in
Samurai Gangsters) team up, then are later aided and abetted by mysterious transfer student Kawada (
Taro Yamamoto, who appeared in
Seijun Suzuki's musical romp
Princess Raccoon (2005), with Hiroko Yakushimaru from
Legend Of 8 Samurai).
There’re some hilarious acting histrionics and amateur execution techniques along the way, and the true stand-outs are Takako (played by
Chiaki Kuriyama, a.k.a. Gogo Yubari in
Kill Bill: Vol. 1),
Yuko Miyamura (who does the hyperactive and chillingly genki Training Video Girl, and previously voiced Asuka Langley Sohryu in the anime series
Neon Genesis Evangelion) and – of course - Takeshi Kitano.
While he previously popped up in a not-so-memorable English language role in the Keanu Reeves vehicle
Johnny Mnemonic (1995), Kitano was outstanding in his own movies
Sonatine (1993),
Hana-bi (1997), and
Zatoichi (2003). Here the actor underpins the rancorous teacher - with a 'pen' chance for revenge - with a whimsical ease and blasé humour that’s gloriously disturbing.
Some incongruous orchestral music by
Johann Sebastian Bach is thrown in for good measure, as well as an overall soundtrack by
Masamichi Amano – who previously scored the ultra-violent anime
Legend Of The Overfiend (1989).
