19 September 2001

Axes, guns, beheadings, knives, blood - it's only a game, but a deadly one. It is the near future and delinquent teens are so out of control that an exasperated Japanese government has passed the Education Reform Act, aka Battle Royale. In an effort to gain control over a generation of rebellious teenagers the Act allows one class of final year high school pupils to be taken to a deserted island where, armed with various weapons, they are forced to assasinate each other till only one survives.

As an arthouse foreign language film starring actors likes Beat Takeshi, you'd expect complex themes, intelligent scripts, and ponderous moments. But what we get is a fun manga-like adventure in movie form. It seems shocking that extreme violence like this can be 'fun'. But the gore is so clean and the killings so choreographed that it seems more comic than horrific. Ironically if the film were a cartoon instead it would be far more disturbing.

However all is not lost for the serious arthouse film-goer. What you could take away with you are insights into Japanese culture like how unproblematic Japanese delinquent teens are compared to, dare I say, our own? And in any case, there haven't been that many teenagers at a foreign language cinema since Crouching Tiger was showing months ago. Surely that is a good thing.

Read other reviews from:
The Observer
Evening Standard
Popcorn.co.uk
Z Review