Battle Royale

Battle Royale is the "so called" Japanese version of The Hunger Games. What people fail to realize is that The Hunger Games was written well after Battle Royale. BR also liberally borrows from movies and literature such as The Running Man and Lord of the Flies. That is not to say that it is not as good as those movies/novels because it is just as good as them in every way it just alters the formula in its own unique ways. I am not going to try and spell out all of the Japanese names because I really do not feel like it.

This is one of those movies that I feel was claimed by the horror movie community and that is why people are so protective of it. There was a fair amount of Hunger Games bashing when it was being compared to Battle Royale because fans thought it was insulting to compare BR to The Hunger Games. BR is a pretty good piece of disturbing action but it was not life altering as some people have described it. The characters are mostly one dimensional except for 2 or 3 of them and I felt almost nothing for them during their struggles. The kid who survived the previous Battle Royale was the only interesting character in my mind because he had the balls to come back and try and destroy the game itself. The psychotic student was also a lot more interesting in the novel and kind of got short changed in the movie but his character was still really badass. The main character was kind of a weakling and did almost nothing for the duration of the film and spent most of his time getting the shit kicked out of him. This kind of took me out of the movie at points and was a little disappointing.

This was a pretty good movie overall but I can't really recommend it to everyone. There is a select group of people who will love this movie and other who will simply think that it is okay. The violence in the movie is very similar to the of Tarantino's movies and that is what I liked best about the movie because the violence was so over the top. Give it a viewing and make your own opinion. Leave comments and lets see how everyone thinks this movie relates to The Hunger Games.