3 out of 5

Director: Kinji Fukasaku

What works especially well for Battle Royale is director Kinji Fukasaku’s presentation of this more as a story than as a platform for espousing any particular mantra or moral. BR would certainly lend itself to layers of meaning – a reality where the solution to the rampant youth is to randomly select a school class, ship them to an island, and fit them with collars that will detonate unless there is only one student left at the end of three days. It’s Lord Of the Flies amped up for a generation of movie-addicted, Red Bull drinking kids. And yes, on kid violence will automatically incite moral wrath in the movie community, but BR really isn’t all that bad. It doesn’t revel in its blood, and it doesn’t go out of the way to make any grand points on what influences kids, or the relationship between authority and children, and etc. It mostly tells its story, with key tidbits of dialogue peppered throughout that hint at something more. On the whole, BR is shot gracefully. We move through scenes with several characters on screen at once who teeter on the edge of exploding into violence and it rarely feels forced. A pacing that could’ve easily been ramped up is purposefully slowed by panels of printed words, or the classical music that is meant to wake the students up in the morning. Unfortunately, I’m not sure what balance I would’ve desired. I love that Fukasaku somehow avoided making this feel exploitative, but I admittedly didn’t feel much of anything – I enjoyed the film, and found some of the concluding dialogue very powerful, but it’s so tapered at the edges that I wasn’t shocked out of an average movie going experience.