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Audio Format: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround, DTS, Stereo Video Format: Letter Box Languages: Japanese Subtitles: Chinese (Simplified, Traditional), English Region Code: 3 Year Made: 2000 Running Time: 114
The pornography of violence is a phrase banded about by the chattering classes. What does it mean? It means Battle Royale.
Veteran Japanese director, Kinji Fukasaku, has taken the concept of Series 7: The Contenders and given it a political dimension. If killing strangers for a reality TV game show is sick, what about killing your friends in a Lord Of The Flies mock-up?
 
The year is 2000-and-something. Japan suffers mass unemployment, worse than now, and the economy's in free fall. School kids riot, as their prospects diminish. The government is panicked into drastic measures, one of which is the island of death scenario.
 
A high school class is picked at random, its pupils drugged and escorted to the island, where they are given weapons and told to murder each other until only one is left alive. The time limit is three days. If they don't play along, they are killed by the army and if they are found in certain danger zones, they are dispatched by detonating explosive devices implanted in neckbraces.
 
At first, they swear allegiance to each other, but soon trust evaporates as the body count rises and, for the next hour-and-a-bit, you watch teenagers being slashed, shot and beaten to death. There is no pleasure in this and the suggestion that it's "violent, surreal and often very funny" (Shane Danielson, Edinburgh Film Festival's next artistic director) requires an explanation. Violent certainly, surreal in your nightmares and as funny as a lethal injection.
 
When it opened in Japan, there was an outcry, as if it might encourage copycat killings. The movie does not deserve such attention. If it wasn't for the sight of young girls in school uniform being gunned down in a blaze of machine-gun fire, the stupidity of the storyline might be more apparent.
 
 
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