Royale Flush

One of my housemates rented Battle Royale from Netflix. I knew nearly nothing about this film, and was rather prepared to watch it with no information whatsoever. For all I knew, it was the Russian classic Battleship Potemkin, which I knew equally nothing (except presumably, that there's a battleship?).

Unfortunately, I had to break information silence, because I was the one slated to email folks about watching this movie at our house. I must say that the email itself was a kind of adventure, wondering how people would respond. I had expected only one person to show up, and my email list almost guaranteed this to happen, despite the possibility that 4 others would show up.

One person I knew wasn't coming at all. Even were she not planning to be out of town at the time the bits were streaming off the DVD, the subject matter would have been enough to scare her away. Even so, her presence on the list would possibly mean two others would not be coming, due to, as she would put it, a contretemps (read: fight), between her and him. The final person on the list might not even read email where I sent it, though to be fair, I didn't have an alternate email to use.
Two people would be there by virtue of living in the house. One more would be there since it was his idea to watch the movie in the first place.

On the undercard, the gang watched episodes from the Arrested Development DVDs, which delights in the zany ongoings of the Bluth family. This is perhaps as British a comedy as there is on American television, and yet, it's not very British at all, certainly not using the familiar trope of bland Brit male making out with buxomous females, though certainly, it comes close.

How to describe Battle Royale? In a way, it's very Asian, almost Hong Kong-like, despite its Japanese heritage. Essentially, the story of a bunch of teenage Japanese schoolkids brought to an island to basically kill each other off. You see, parents and schoolteachers, are sick and tired of the rebellious teens, and have decided to make this game. Unlike, say, the Running Man, the execrable POS by Ah-nuld, this game seems to have little commercial purpose. There's no sense it's being televised for mass consumption.

Each kid is sent with a backpack with some food and a weapon, ranging from guns, knives, axes, to lowly pot lids and binoculars. With 40 kids, there's really not that much time for character development. Kids are given some stereotypes, like girl who wants to kill everyone, and then guy with crazy hair who really wants to kill everyone. Repressed emotions abound ("I've always loved you!"..."Why didn't you ever say anything? How was I supposed to know?).

It was a surprise to me to see Takeshi Kitano outside of a film not directed by himself. Apparently, Kitano is a star in Japan. Host of a TV show, he also makes his brand of violent/silent films where the stoic lead shows no emotion, and is capable of love and severing all in one. Kitano apparently was in a motorcycle accident that left his face partly paralyzed, except for an odd twitch. It's said it didn't affect his acting that much since he didn't use half the muscles in his face anyway.

The game show element shows up twice, once in the zany video hosted by a way-too-cheerful cheerleader type, explaining the rules of the game (last person to survive wins, 3 days to play the game, avoid danger zones). We get a sense of the kick-ass nature of Kitano when he knifes one of the kids for interrupting the video. Kitano otherwises cheerfully exercises, munches on a student's cookies, bickers with his estranged daughter (ah, Clint, you do watch Kitano!). There's a peculiar story of how he, as a schoolteacher, may have fooled around with a student of his who had accidentally knifed him.

However, that part of the backstory is relegated to an end-sequence of flashbacks which inexplicably ran out of money for decent translators, and therefore, made less than optimum sense.

What remains is an over-the-top melodrama, as guy and girlfriend team up with previous winner of the game who had to kill his girlfriend, lest both of them die (tis the rules of the game), and wacky hacker group featuring the fastest coding in the east plus the knowledge to build explosives (and this huge backstory doesn't get the kind of payoff you'd expect), while Kitano hangs out at school central, announcing the death toll.

This Lord of the Flies on steroids has kids trying to make do in the three days they have to live, and flashbacks to a earlier, happier time, when basketball was played under the rim. No slam dunks in this film. Androgynous guys abound resembling heroes of anime. There's a giddy sense of anarchy, filled with (translated) dialogue that has to be heard to be believed. the cinematographer is damn good though, showing off the lush island scenery as these tough kids realize that all the guidance counseling they received was for naught.

The storyline vaguely resembles Resurrection of The Little Matchstick Girl where the loafing Korean gamer gets pulled into a real-life video game, trying to save the matchstick girl, while hanging out with Korean Lara Croft. It takes you into this bizarre, video-game-as-reality world, but where that film fails to convince us of the character's love for the matchstick girl, there's more of a sense that the characters in BR care for one another. In a corny way, the flashbacks do a good enough job showing how, once upon a time, life was innocent, and all anyone cared about was playing this game of basketball.