BATTLE ROYALE: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION (Anchor Bay) D: Kinji Fukasaku, w/ Tatsuya Fujiwara, Aki Maeda. BATTLE ROYALE (2000) Rating: NNNNN BATTLE ROYALE II: REQUIEM (2003) Rating: NNN Blu-ray package: NN Rating: NNNNN
With The Hunger Games hitting theatres on Friday, now’s a good time to revisit the original teenage slaughter fest, Battle Royale, a trash classic whose massive violence, fine character moments and themes work even better in the extended cut.
The set-up makes no sense: a new Japanese law condemns one randomly selected high school class – 42 kids – to battle to the last survivor over three days on a deserted island. Exploding collars ensure compliance.
The kids are well defined, and director Kinji Fukasaku keeps the action flowing and lets the themes of adult failure, trust and friendship emerge naturally.
In the sequel, a different class of collared kids are sent to take down a former BR winner who’s become an anti-adult terrorist. There’s still plenty of action, and the film takes an explicit pro-terrorist, anti-American stance, but it’s also awash in cheesy sentimentality about dying gloriously for the revolution.
The two-hour extras disc focuses exclusively on BR1. There’s little information, but you’ll get a good sense of Fukasaku and his young cast.
EXTRAS Battle Royale extended and theatrical cuts, making-of doc, on-set footage, press conference, cast and crew Q&A, rehearsal and audition footage, more. Japanese audio. English subtitles.
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