BATTLE ROYAL

If you ever think American movies are a getting just a little bit TOO violent, I recommend that you check out a Japanese flick called BATTLE ROYAL.

This is a movie where the whole point is to watch teenagers slaughter each other for fun.

And you know what?

It actually DOES have a point, one that it expresses brilliantly.

In Japan, the education system is war. Students are competing against each other, literally, for the best spots in the best kindergarten. Seriously. If you get into a good kindergarten, see, it means you get into a good elementary school, which means that you can then go to a good junior high school, leading to a good senior high school, leading to a top-notch university, which inevitably gives way to a high-level company, which leads to a prosperous, successful life.

BATTLE ROYAL the movie is about a time in the near future when unemployment is high, and most kids have rebelled, refusing to go to school. The government decides to take some of these kids and group them together on an island. Once on the island, they are then given weapons and forced to kill each other. There's about fifty of them. The winner is the only one left alive. Go to it, kids. Have fun.

("Why are you doing this?" one of the kids asks. "Life is tough," is the answer. Which may be the most accurate encapsulation of educational philosophy there is. We're preparing you for life, and if it's too much, well, so is life. You endure or you die.)

A brutal, sadistic idea. What's particularly unsettling is not necessarily the violence itself, but the age of the perpetrators and victims. These are all teenage boys and girls, and, unlike in American movies, they LOOK like teenagers because they ARE teenagers. And they shoot one another and fire arrows into each other's necks and lob chopped-off-heads filled with hand grenades stuck in their mouths, all of it punctuated by the patented bloody gore best found in Japanese movies. This is a flick that could never be made in America, because a) kids killing kids would never make it past the ratings board and b) violence in American film rarely is used to accentuate a well-thought out theme; in Japanese movies, violence is usually the icing on the cake -- in American films, violence IS the cake.

But there IS a point, you see. I think the film works as a potent metaphor for the Japanese school system. Some kids give up right away, killing themselves. Others try and plot against the adults. The 'transfer' student is right away seen as a source of suspicion. There are only a few adults portrayed at all in the movie -- the leader of the 'Battle Royale', a lazy oaf who first appears menacing and fierce but later is seen lackadaisically munchng cookies and whose own daughter tells him on the phone to not bother coming home, him being such a loser and all. Another adult, a parent of one of the kids,is seen in flashback, hanging from the ceiling, killing himself but leaving a note draped around the rope essentially telling his kid: "You can do it!" The older generation cops and out kills themselves, but hey, you kids will do just fine! Do as I say, not as I do.

These are what these kids are facing. They distrust the adults in their lives and rightly so. A game is created by adults designed so the kids themselves can kill each other. And what's the reward? Life. Which means, inevitably, a life of failure and incompetence. Of job insecurity and emotional indifference from your own family and the younger generation. Of rote conformity and fear of youth.

The whole thing is a brilliant critique of the modern Japanese educational system, and, to a lesser extent, Japanese society as well. It's a bitter and piercing expose, and it's told through the means of a really warped, twisted, violent suspense tale.

You can get off on this movie on either level. It works as an action/suspense story, kind of a Japanese version of LORD OF THE FLIES meets THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME.

But there's another layer, a deeper, darker layer, one that becomes more disturbing the more you think about it and the more you know about Japan. This is a perfect example where violence on screen is not only justified, but essential. It's blunt and raw and a little bit ludicrous and always painful.

The film ends with a little bit of hope and words of advice, if not warning, to the younger generation -- "keep running."

I'd be inclined to see that as a positive note. A ray of sunshine, if you will. Sometimes things get better. Sometimes you CAN escape the game.

The thing is, like life, hope can die quick, and the game is rarely over when it seems to be.

There is, after all, a BATTLE ROYAL II.