Day 251: Battle Royale

Directed By- Kinji Fukasaku

Written By- Kenta Fukasaku Based on the Book "BATTLE ROYALE" By Koushun Takami

Starring- Tatsuya Fujiwara, Aki Maeda, Taro Yamamoto, Takeshi Kitano, Masanobu Ando, Kou Shibasaki, Takashi Tsukamoto, Sousuke Takaoka, Chiaki Kuriyama

Critic's Review- "Some will be uncomfortable or appalled, and the mix of humour and horror is uneasy, but this isn't a film you'll forget easily. And seriously, what would you do?"- Kim Newman "Empire Magazine 

Rotten Tomatoes Rating- Critics- 86% Audience- 89%

Out of a possible 5 stars- 4 1/2 stars

WARNING CONTAINS MILD SPOILERS

My Review-

It's all in the tagline for this movie "42 students. Only one way to survive." This is the movie that is to have inspired "The Hunger Games" and I agree, but one thing that is different with this movie, It is WAY better. This movie is way more violent, you get to know the characters even more throughout the movie, and you have a even more sickening reason to why they have to fight against each other. Also this movie linger's with you until even after the credits roll it is that effective on you, it does not have a love triangle, no this movie it a no holds bar fight to the finish and its people that know each other who have been friends for years turning on each other that makes it worse while watching it. I have wanted to watch this movie since I heard about it in film class last semester, and now that I have finally watched this is possibly my new favorite Foreign film. It was hard to watch at times that is only because of how the characters changed during the course of the film, from being best friends for years to wanting/needing to kill each other to survive and all for a stupid reason thought up by the government has punishment towards the kids. What also made this movie worse is that people treated it like it was nothing, and like it was something to be happy about and to have fun with it when it was not something to laugh about. What also makes this movie kind of heartbreaking that they need to do this, this movie should not need to be compared to "The Hunger Games" not that much anyways, there are major differences with the two, sort of the same premise but major differences. One of them being is that this one had more emotion and that you had them isolated by themselves on an island with out many people knowing what was going on. I can sort of see why this movie was banned over here in the states for awhile or something like that, but then again I have seen movies that were more violent than this one. I Highly recommend watching this movie if you have ever wanted to watch it or just want to watch a no holds bar violent movie this is for you. I do not want to say anymore about this movie, because I would like for everyone to see this movie for themselves, since I thought it was better than "The Hunger Games." To me this movie made "The Hunger Games" look like a Disney movie.