Elwood's Essentials #5: Battle Royale

Seeing how  “The Hunger Games” is still currently one of the most talked about releases of this year, even more so with the forthcoming sequel which will pointlessly split the second book of the Hunger Games trilogy in two what better time could there be to revisit the film which it essentially ripped off, despite Suzanne Collins frequently going on record to state that she “had never heard of that book until [her] book was turned in,” and unsurprisingly in return the fans of this film have continued to savage her book as a ripoff, while early promotional material for the book marketed it as “Battle Royale for Kids” only further questioning such shaky claims. So this week I essentially choose to add fuel to the fire and look at the original movie, which is undoubtedly one of my all time favorites. I should also warn that the videos do contain some scenes of violence which might be shocking for some readers and are used purely in the context of illustrating points raised, so if easily shocked do not view.

Set at the dawn of the millennium, Japan as a nation has collapsed and with unemployment on the rise and the youth boycotting the school system, the government makes the radical decision of passing the Millennium Education Reform Act, AKA the “BR Act”, Each year a class is chosen by lottery to take part and having been placed on a deserted island, the class are given three days to battle amongst themselves until only one student remains, with the survivor being used as an example of the lengths the government are willing to go, to maintain order in the nation.

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Released as what could be marked as the start of the new Asian invasion were the interest in Asian cinema literally exploded at the start of 2000, with films like “The Ring”, “Audition” and of course this film winning huge acclaim from not only established fans of Asian cinema, but many non fans of foreign cinema aswell, with these films paving the way for the slew of titles with followed in their wake, as they proved that there was more to Asian cinema than Kung fu and art house samurai movies.

Based on the Bestselling pulp novel by Koushun Takami, the film directed by Kinji Fukasaku manages to take a novel which would have made a perfectly good exploitation movie and turns it into what could almost be considered high art with exploitation undertones, let alone the fact he managed to find a way to mould the multi-stranded plotlines of the novel into a filmable script. At the heart of the film though we have Shuya Nanahara (Tatsuya Fujiwara) who has been finding his life growing increasingly difficult since the suicide of his father, a situation which only gets worse when his class find themselves unwittingly elected to participate in this year’s Battle Royale with each member of the class finding themselves fitted with an explosive collar and assigned a bag containing supplies and a randomly selected weapon (to help remove any natural advantages). Seeing the chaos erupting around him he takes it upon himself to try and save his friend and secret crush Noriko Nakagawa (Aki Maeda) while forming an uneasy alliance with transfer student and BR Veteran Shogo Kawada (Taro Yamamoto), who also hides his own secretive past.

What is most interesting about the film is how it manages to focus on so many characters at the same time, finding a way to explore their individual goals while even more skilfully managing to make them all unique and individual which is certainly no easy task especially when you consider that there are 42 students to account for. True some of these are mere cannon fodder or choose to leave the game early, opting for suicide over the choice to killing their classmates, but within these students are those with their own engaging agenda’s and while most of the class are busy just trying to survive or team up with others for safety, we have characters such the psychotic exchange student Kazuzo Kiriyama (Chiaki Kuriyama) and the beautiful and deadly Mitsuko Souma (Kou Shibaski) who happily kill friend and foe alike with Mitsuko especially using it as a chance for revenge against her former gang members and tormentors.

Meanwhile others pursue more legitimate goals, with Shinji Mimura (Takashi Tsukamoto) and his friends plotting to hack into the game’s military mainframe, while we also get a surprising love triangle on the battlefield between Hiroki Sugimura (Sosuke Takaoka), his best friend Takako Chigusa (Chiaki Kuriyama who is probably best known as “Kill Bill’s” Chain Whip / Meteor Hammer welding Gogo) and his love interest Kayako Kotohiki (Takayo Mimura) all adding surprising levels of depth to the film, which contains a lot more heart and emotion than you would usually expect from a film of it’s type, with director Fukasaku frequently managing to surprise the viewer with moments of real emotional intensity.

Although the film has characters who could be considered the villains, the real main bad guy here is Kitano, the former teacher turned government agent, played by the always amazing “Beat” Takashi Kitano who is once again on great form, as he provides a running commentary of the dead and acts as an unquestionable supporter of the government’s actions, no doubt due to his own fractured home life, which is highlighted through a phone call with his estranged daughter, who would later appears in a more pivotal role in the sequel “Battle Royale: Requiem”. Needless to say Kitano’s laid back and mysterious motives make him another fascinating character, especially when he chooses to involve himself in the game, while showing an especial fondness for Noriko.

Though incredibly violent, Fukasaku still manages to capture several moments of genuine humour from the day glow coloured training video complete with bubbly presenter, to the students which receive the more useless weapons from Pan lids to paper fans, which really puts them in a worse position considering that their fellow students could be armed with any one of the nasty weapons available from scythe’s and stun guns to shotguns and machine guns.

Needless to say with so much hardware available things do frequently get violent, with hosepipe arterial sprays, exploding heads and even a poisoning making up just some of the smorgus board of violence which Fukasaku has crafted, while at the same time carefully editing and reworking some of the more graphic sections of the book, so that while frequently shocking it is never prolonged so that the film descends into farce.

The soundtrack is comprised of popular classics and original music performed by the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and composed by Masamichi Amano, who previously has composed music for anime classic’s “Urotsukidoji” and “Giant Robo”, aswell as more recently “Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games”. Here though he turns Verdi’s Requiem into the official “Battle Royale” theme which never fails to get me amped up for this film whenever I sit down to watch it, while also effectively using Bach’s Air from orchestral Suite No.3 In D Major and Strauss’s Blue Danube Waltz, which will no doubt have a whole new set of imagery attached to it after seeing this movie, in much the same way that Oliver Stone did for Barber’s Adagio for Strings or what Quentin Tarantino has done to a number of pop obscurities.

A classic in every sense from the skilful direction, choice casting and superb soundtrack, it’s a brutal non stop ride, that only further highlights why film goers shouldn’t be narrowing their cinematic world view to just the English spoken productions, while no doubt opening a doorway for many into the exciting world of Asian cinema.

Series 7: The Contenders

Title: Series 7: The Contenders
Director: Daniel Minahan
Released: 2001
Staring: Will Arnett, Brooke Smith, Michael Kaycheck, Merrit Wever, Richard Venture, Marylouise Burke, Glenn Fitzgerald, Donna Hanover, Danton Stone

Rating: 4 / 5

Plot: The Contenders is the ultimate reality TV show, were six people are picked at random by a social security number lottery, before being given a gun and forced to hunt each other down, while the cameras follow their every move. Dawn (Smith) is the currently reigning champion, having won two seasons already and only needs to win one more season to be set free, but at eight months pregnant and faced with having to hunt down her high school sweet heart Jeff (Fitzgerald). will she be able to survive this final game.

Review: Maybe it’s because I’ve been watching “The Hills” marathon most of this week on MTV (It’s more to do with there being nothing else on, than watching out of any kind of necessity), which urged me to dig this film out from the collection again, especially seeing how the film is not only shot exactly like a reality TV show, with only the barest of title cards and none of the extensive crew listing which would mark it out as being a film, so it almost feels as if you’ve popped in a pilot taping of a TV show, while the illusion is only added to by having shown in a TV marathon format.
On it’s original release it was over looked, mainly due to reality TV not being as much of a cash cow, with reality TV only in it’s infant stages, which probably explains why I found it to be a much more effective film now than I did when I first watched it, though bizarrely enough, “Series 7” originally started as an idea for TV back in 1998, when director Minaham pitched it as a fake reality TV concept, only for one TV Executive to return to Minaham asking “Can it be more sexy and less violent?”. Still it was the experience gained by working on a reality TV show which inspired Minaham to pen the film in the first place.



The contestants (or contenders as they are known) are a real mixed bunch, who Dawn has standing between her and freedom, including student Lindsey (Wever), retired conspiracy nut Franklin (Venture), ER nurse and possible angel of death Connie (Burke), the cocaine snorting unemployed asbestos remover Anthony (Kaycheck) and of course her high school sweetheart Jeff, who is also dying of testicular cancer.
Each of these contestants are very different from each other and also have their own way of attending to the task they been given, as the film constantly switches between the camera crews following each of them, with Lindsey being driven around by her family values driven parents, giving her pep talks before sending her off to kill, while Dawn takes great delight in driving to the houses of her fellow contenders and taunting them over the phone. The camera crews also acting as a source of confession, as we learn more about each of them, though a mixture of their conversations with their cameraman, creating such great moments as Lindsey talking about her boyfriend buying her a bulletproof vest, with a sense of nievity, as if he’d just bought her flowers almost unaware of the danger she is in, or Connie talking about her work in a busy ER, which constantly alludes to her darker side. These are also added to though the info bursts, which randomly appear accompanied by the dry commentary of the show narrator (Arnett), who also comments on the action, while never allowing himself to show any emotion towards any of the contestants and their actions, almost as if he is passed being shocked by the things he has seen the contenders do to each other.
The fact that all of the contenders are played by unknowns really helps, with the tension and in many cases, provides a number of nasty shocks, especially when contenders you expected to be with the show to the end, suddenly meet a grisly death at the hands of one of their other contenders, much like the general public it would seem with their occasional interactions with the contenders, who take on it would seem a similar level of fame, achieved by reality TV contestants, seen in a brief scene of a maternity nurse asking Dawn to sign her scan photos of Dawn's baby.

Despite all of the contenders being given a standard handgun by the production team, surprisingly enough none of the contenders actually use this weapon, with the deaths seen here all pretty original including a savage beating to death and lethal injection both making an appearance and certainly pushing the film past my expectations, of what I expected to see, having originally expected a film heavy on shootouts, which are absent outside of the pot-shots contenders occasionally take at each other, with several of the deaths even proving quite disturbing to watch, even for a veteran of movie violence like myself, with each death being stripped down to it’s basics with the reality TV style camera work being used, with what your not seeing only adding to the imagery you are seeing. It’s in this perticular aspect that Connie really steps into her own, having been introduced as a timid character, she is soon proving more than willing to do what it takes to get the job done, never quite slipping into a psychotic state but instead reducing her world view into a more black and white state, seeing justification in everything she does and only showing weakness when this new world she has created for herself, is confronted by her duties as a nurse to actually save lives rather than taking them away, but it would seem even this has been infused with her own personal beliefs even before the show started.

The past which Jeff and Dawn share does take over a major part of the film, while also glancing at the issue of euthanasia, seeing how Jeff is using the show as a way to for him to escape his life dominated with fighting his terminal cancer. Still their back story in a way slowed down the film a little to much for me, but that could also be down the to use of “Love will tear us apart” by Joy Division which made this scene kind of drag for me, especially as I’ve never been the biggest fan of that band (New Order were okay though). Still these scenes are not without purpose, adding not only the love interest aspect to the show (something which is certainly a popular reality TV theme) but also helping to drive the story onwards, as you’re confronted with the prospect of Dawn killing her high school sweetheart, who she very clearly still cares for much to the resentment of Jeff’s current wife.

“Series 7” makes for an interesting study of reality TV and what lengths it can be stretched to provide the audience with an ever more real experience and even though, this idea has certainly been done before, with films like “The Running Man” (1987), it still manages to carve out it’s own unique and fresh way of presenting the idea, while clearly showing that the addictive like influence that these shows can have, as it ends with a trailer for series 8, an idea which was thankfully never followed up, leaving this film an undiluted study, even if Minaham choose to return to directing TV rather than features, its almost a teasingly glimpse of someone who could have been the next big visionary director, along side the likes of Gondry and Jonze, instead leaving this as his sole feature credit and no doubt a film which will continue to be looked at, as each new generation of critics and cinema junkies hunt it out.

Ozploitation Month: Turkey Shoot

Title: Turkey Shoot
Director: Brian Trenchard-Smith

Released: 1982

Staring: Steve Railsback, Oliva Hussey, Michael Craig, Carmen Duncan, Noel Ferrier, Lynda Stoner, Roger Ward, Michael Petrovich
Rating: 4/ 5

Plot: In the near future (or shud that be an alternate past seeing how it’s supposed to be 1995), people deemed as being Deviants by the totalitarian government are held at a rehabilitation camp, till theycan be reprogrammed as useful members of society. Camp director Thatcher (Craig) however, has chosen five inmates to be take part in his latest hunt, with the chance of freedom if they survive. The only catch is that they are the prey!

Review: Ever since the release of “Battle Royale” (2000) which along with the like of “Ringu” (1998) and “Audition” (1999) helped push Asian cinema, into the mainstream conscious, exposing films that would have largely been ignored by most of the cinema going public, other than cinema snobs and the foreign film fans. However since the release of “Battle Royale” it seems that when ever you have a film, come out which involves any group of people being hunted for sport, be it by people, zombies or pretty much anything else, you will always find critics quick to attach the label of a film being a “Battle Royale Clone”, which is ironic when that film is basically the same idea as “Turkey Shoot” except on a larger scale, increasing this films group of five to a school class of 42 pupils, but it’s clearly “Turkey shoot” that provides the groundwork and even though both films share the same idea, they both have enough originality to stand on their own, but if anything is a clone of anything, then it has to be of “Turkey Shoot”, but then at the same time you could say that this film is also a homage to Richard Connel’s "The Most Dangerous Game" and George Orwell's "1984", proving once again that like everything else it is just really a homage of a homage.

Opening with a montage of stock footage of riots around the world, which provides all the backdrop you need, to were society has been heading to the point, that the faceless government has set up concentration style camps, to re-educate those who wish to stand up against their Orwellian vision of society. We are quickly introduced to our so called heroes a resistance member Paul Anders (Railsback), an accused sex worker Rita (Stoner) and Chris (Hussey) who is a shopworker, who after attempting to stop the beating of a man, by government police is accused of being part of the resistance and sentenced to re-education at the camp along with Paul and Jennifer, who will soon be taking part in the hunt planned by the well spoken, pipe smoking camp director Thatcher, who is played effortlessly laid back here by Micheal Craig, who uses the sadistic camp guards to enforce his wrath on the camp detainee’s, rather than dirty his hands with such things.

With Paul having been sent to his camp, he now see’s this as the perfect time to hold a Turkey Shoot, gathering together several like minded fellow hunters, who each choose themselves a target prisoner to hunt with each prisoner then given twenty four hours to escape, with the promise of freedom if they do.
This simple plot, helps keep the pace of the film moving quickly and despite the lack of prisoners being hunted, a modest five compared to the 42 of “battle royale”, it still manages to remain satisfying enough for those of us, who heard the comparisons to “battle royale” and picked this film up hoping for a similar style bloodbath, as all four of the hunters have their own unique style of hunting with the well spoken Tito (Petrovich) preferring to chase after his target in what can best be described as a mini bulldozer and unleashing his sideshow freak / werewolf pet “Alph” to remove parts of his targets anatomy, including one scene in which he invites Alph to eat the toes of prisoner Dodge, before letting him go, so that he might enjoy hunting him again. Meanwhile Jennifer (Duncan) prefers to dress like she is going on a foxhunt, taking time with her crossbow, as she plays with her target, like a cat with a mouse, aswell as any other of the prisoners, she gets in her sights regardless of whether they are her target or not, only truly revelling the extent of her dark side towards the end, in one of the more surprising and chilling scenes, which works all the more strongly when the film is hardly subtle and pure grind house fodder for the majority of it’s run time.

Gore wise there is plenty of interesting moments, to rival that of “Battle Royale” which I know I keep drawing comparisons to, but that will be the film which most viewers will compare this film to and “Turkey Shoot” does have more than enough of it’s original moments, as limbs are removed and a memorable exploding head being only a few of the delights on offer.
On the soundtrack, Brian May adds his usual orchestral styling to the film soundtrack, once again like he did finding the perfect score to soundtrack, the events unfolding on screen, heightening the experience in the same way that he did with the “Mad Max” movies and here also it works perfectly to complement the film.

“Turkey Shoot” is defiantly a lost classic, that will now hopefully find it’s audience once more, especially since being featured in the “Ozplotiation” documentary “Not Quite Hollywood” which will no doubt have the “Battle Royale” fans hunting it down already, something that I urge you to do, even if this film has so many random moments, such as the werewolf create and most of the bad guys, appear to have come from the Star Trek school of villainy, it still possesses that grubby charm that makes it still a highly watchable movie, I’m now after seeing both this film and the documentary “Not Quite Hollywood” torn between which has the better story, the film or the making of the film, which if I’m to believe the documentary, had half the budget being funded, through betting funds at the dog track and live ammunition being fired at the actors, let alone the story of Oliva Hussey almost cutting Roger Wards real hands off with a machete, which all in all only helps further this films reputation as a Ozploitation classic!

The Condemned

Title: The Condemned
Director: Scott Wiper
Released: 2007
Staring: “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Vinnie Jones, Robert Mammone, Madeleine West and Rick Hoffman
Rating: 2 / 5

Plot: Jack Conrad (Austin) is a convict awaiting execution in a Salvadoran prison. "Purchased" by a wealthy television producer and transported to a deserted island in the South Pacific along with nine other condemned criminals (similarly purchased from prisons around the world), they are "offered" the opportunity to avoid capital punishment and win back their freedom by fighting to the death in an illegal game to be filmed and broadcast live over the Internet.

Review: Since the release of “Battle Royale” it’s been followed by a whole host of assorted clones, each giving their own spin to the death match setup and since it’s release it’s also been hard not draw comparisons between that film and any other film, which bares even the slightest of similarities. Sadly the condemned fails to bring anything new to the table and instead gives us nothing but a below par action flick and a vehicle for one of the biggest and certainly most popular of WWE names “Stone Cold Steve Austin”.
The third film to be released by “WWE Films” following the enjoyable horror romp “See No Evil” (With Kane taking on monster duties) and the daft popcorn action flick, as well as direct to DVD feature “The Marine” (with John Cena & which already has a sequel in the works at the time of writing), The Condemned much like “The Marine” has a simple enough setup though one which sadly never lives up to its full potential, as our group of convicts, who the majority of which we never discover their reasons for their imprisonment are dropped off (literally in this case as they are thrown from the helicopter carrying them) on the island to hunt and kill each other off, with the story from this point quickly dissolving into what amounts to mainly filler between fight scenes, as we watch members of the production crew have doubts about the program, while arguing about how moral it is to have people fighting each other to the death in the name of entertainment??? Surely they should have thought about these kinds of things earlier you can’t help but wonder really. As well as this we get some lazy character development for Jack, revolving around his girlfriend watching the show in a bar and two FBI agents who are trying to locate the island, yet failing at the same time to achieve anything outside of having a stupidly large amount of meetings, to the point that I’m sure they are challenging “Star Trek – The Next Generation” for the title of the most pointless amount of meetings ever.
The fights sequences which after all are main selling point of the film, however frustratingly are often hard to follow thanks to the shaky close up way in which they are filmed with only a couple of fights escaping this style of shooting, which is even more of a shame when one of those fights isn’t the confrontation between Jack and “The Russian” (Played by big hulking guy for hire Nathan Jones) seeing how Nathan Jones has shown on several occasions in films such as “Warrior King” and “Fearless” that he can put on a decent fight scene, which would make it all the more exciting when you remember that Austin is after all a professional wrestler and more than capable of faking a fight sequence, but this is again ruined by the bizarre fighting style which they lumber Austin with, which see’s him fighting more like a boxer than his usual brawler style, which director Scott Wiper is quick to comment on in the special features on the disc, attributing this style to the fact his character is ex special forces, while meanwhile the groans of Stone Cold fans can be heard throughout the land.
The next real gripe with the condemned is Vinnie Jones, whose performance is nothing new and further adds to the opinion that like Danny Dyer, the only thing which changes with each of his roles is the scenery, with him once again in sweary yobbo mob mode, which might have worked the first couple of times the audience is exposed to it, but the more often I see him recycling the same style the more tiresome it becomes, much like when ever a character is ex military and British, they have to be Ex SAS, which surprise surprise is exactly what the character of Ewan McStarley is. Seriously why even have him as ex military, why not just make him a Mercenary or a killer or something alittle more original than just the Brit version of Austin’s character! As for the rest of the assembled convicts we are left to draw our own conclusions, as to who they are and what they did, with the few bits we are told being patchy at best, as they are pushed to the background, further adding to the opinion that their sole purpose is to add to the body count.

Looking at the Condemned now that I have bared witness to the hasty battle royale knock off it is, I am less than surprised that this film almost bankrupted WWE films and is a disappointing stumble, after two perfectly expectable films and makes me hope that future titles will keep Austin off the screen and in the ring were he works best, or at least give us the Stone Cold we all love and adore, rather than some hindered knockoff were as the less that we see of Vinnie Jones in this genre the better really.


On a final note this film was almost as painful to write about as to sit through and at various points I considered giving up on it, but that would have then meaning finding another film to watch in it's place and true this kind of movie is what I expected to find when I choose to hunt out bad movies, but The Condemned sadly enough fails on far to many labels to even be redeemable enough to recommend even to WWE fans.