Battle Royale2000

81/100 This is the beginning of a subgenre. The Hunger Games started here, Squid Games started here, more things than I can name started here, and I, for one, love this as a beginning and as a movie. Now, the movie's obviously not perfect, but I have relatively little complaints here. I will say that the comedy doesn't really work, and at times can feel disruptive to the tone, but it's a relatively minor complaint, and I have much more praise to give, especially in terms of action. The action here is high-energy and really fun, especially with how gory everything is. It's shock value executed well and a movie about survival at its finest, with a brilliant execution of the death game concept here. This is complemented by an excellent score courtesy of Masamichi Amano, helping build the atmosphere of the battle royale as it goes on. The characters here are a mixed bag. Now obviously with a cast of 42, not everyone's going to be fleshed out, but I still feel a large portion of the cast feel unlikeable or sameish, and even those with backstory can feel somewhat forced. The film goes for a trick where it pulls a flashback whenever a character's about to die in order to make the audience sympathize multiple times, and I'm not really a fan. No, I'm not going to sympathize with Mitsuko because she nearly got raped, that's not enough of an excuse to start acting like a slasher villain. However, it's also true that there are several characters I like. The closest thing we have to a heroic trio, Shuya, Noriko and Kawada, are all characters I enjoy. I also like Kiriyama just because the aura on that man is insane, way too much for a high-schooler to have. If I like a character, I think it's mostly because of the performance the actor gives, and that's most true with the main antagonist Kitano. Takeshi Kitano's performance really helped me like this character, as he's great at portraying this teacher who has turned on his students due to his own failure to manage children, especially his daughter. The characters, however, are not my favourite thing about the movie, as it is instead the themes. At first, I wondered why juvenile delinquency would be curbed by a death game which would most likely encourage violent children. However, as the film progressed, I began to like the ideas presented more. The conflict between children and adults is portrayed very well, and I think it's brilliant how all the adults seen are more brutal, and can even be paralleled to the teenagers, with questions of how growing up in a world of death games might have affected them. In the end, the battle royale only encourages what it seeks to prevent. Overall, this movie doesn't aim higher than to be dumb fun, and it is, for the most part. However, there's some themes explored here which I think are very interesting hidden under the guise of a genre codifier. It's a great movie overall, and one which I'd highly recommend.