Battle Royale

The Battle Weary ROSSMAN

Holy fucking shit.... They made it. They actually made it. The ULTIMATE action movie. Unbefuckinglievable. And it stars kids. Don't that beat all.

Battle Royale has to be the most fucked up movie I've ever seen since Meet the Feebles back in '92. BR is bizarre, yet it even screams out that it has a message... Sort of. But I'm getting ahead of myself yet again. First I have to tell you what it's about.

In case you've been living in a cave for the past year, or you're as retarded as the family dog after Corky gave it a big, mental bear hug and cut off its oxygen for a good 5 minutes, it goes a little something like this: Japan in the near future is in trouble. The economy is in the shitter and juvenile delinquency is overrunning the entire nation. How does one combat a problem such as this? Well, my fellow Americans basically look away and pretend that it isn't happening. But this Japan of the future thought long and hard about it and came up with a super cool solution: The BR Act. The BR Act is their last resort at stopping youth crimes and stupidity. Every year a random class of middle or high schoolers is kidnapped by the government and dropped off on some abandoned island. Each student is then given a weapon or tool (i.e. guns, knives, binoculars, tracking system) and thrown out into the wild to play the ultimate game of survival. They then have 3 days to kill everybody else on the island by whatever means necessary. At the end of the time limit, if there is more than one teen standing, their Running Man-esque tracking collars will explode. You see, like the Highlander there can BE only one!

Sounds corny? Possibly. But no explanation could ever do this film justice. It is soooo cut-ass rugged. The violence is brutal and almost unreal. For example, while the teacher is explaining the rules of the Act to the children, he casually chucks a knife into the head of an interrupting teenie bopper in order to shut her the hell up. Then he leaves her corpse in the center of the room while he continues talking. Brilliant! That scene with the dead body on the floor lasts around ten minutes. The dead girl just lies there surrounded by crying and shaking classmates for TEN MINUTES. It was really creepy.

What was also kind of eerie is the way that some of the kids decide to handle the situation they're thrown into. Some turn into incredible pussies and commit suicide as an alternative to slaughtering their friends (in one quick segment some boy is pulled off a cliff by his pansy girlfriend and he truly doesn't want to go out that way). Some try to find peaceful ways to get around the official rules of the BR Act. And the rest go ape shit crazy with power. The ones who do that make this movie the incredible flick that it is. These children use the most creative ways to kill their enemies and amigos. A few set traps. Several go hunting. And some try to turn the "game" back onto the adults who set up camp in the highly guarded school in the center of the island.

Pandemonium is what this movie is about. Watching kids shoot the shit out of their childhood sweethearts all in the name of survival. Quite a few seem to enjoy themselves a bit too much which gave me the chills because I'm a big pansy. There are quite a few intentional laughs throughout the story (mostly dark dark jokes about the bloodbaths that spurt up all over the place). But rest assured, this ain't no comedy. This sure as hell is not your father's Ah-nold movie. There really isn't even a point to this whole experiment either. By the end of everything the BR Act is still in place and apparently still very necessary. The schools are still in shambles and kids are still total assholes, but there's just a few less of them when the bullets stop flying. Kinda makes you think.... Message!

So, what did I think of the crimson encompassed Battle Royale? I find that I have to give it a very worthy 69 out of 70.34 Rossman points of violence. Never before had I experienced anything as straight up disturbing as that "how to" video that the kids have to watch at the beginning of the movie. That chick was waaaaaaay too perky.

The Bringer of Pain, ANGRY AMY

After taking that whole thing in I just have one thing to say. I'm going to vomit and I'm going to do it on all of the Rossman's most personal possessions. Then I hope he tries to clean them all off and gets sick from the puke fumes and passes out wherein he'll hit his head on a bookshelf and fall face first into a sickening puddle of a mixture of both his and my oral excrement. Only then will he understand the pain and torture that I feel I went through while watching this putrid movie.

I don't know or care how the Rossman keeps getting all this blackmail stuff on me, what scares the hell out of me is why he keeps getting it. I loathe him, and not in a Cybil/Bruce Willis Moonlighting kind of way. I wish he was set on fire from the inside out while forced to eat rusty nails and watch a two week marathon of Oprah! I wish him pain worse than having your fingernails forcibly removed and then having your hand dunked in hydrochloric acid.... for eternity!! How the hell could anybody mistranslate that into wanting to be with somebody?

Wait!.... Maybe he does hate me as much as I hate him and he just happens to be a masochist too! That would explain a whole helluva lot, like why he keeps forcing me to watch these horrible horrible movies with him and his friends all the time.

Maybe the only way to end this vicious cycle is to just blow us all the fuck up at the next blackmail/movie night.

The whole movie watching experience gets one giant thumbs down from me. I wish that the Rossman was one of the contestants on that island with the kids, but that his only weapon was a dead fish that made loud noises to constantly give away his position.

The Royale With Cheese, SATAN

When I had mankind create film over a hundred years ago it was in order for them to eventually corrupt the peoples of the world with unmitigated violence and hatred. That is why Battle Royale is my favorite movie of all time... And keep in mind that I can even see into the evil future.

Not too many things make me happy nowadays. Yeah, there will always be war and famine someplace on Earth, but that crap was getting veeeeery monotonous. You know, everybody in the Middle East kills eachother.... Blah. Done that shit. Some starving Skeletor kids fade to dust in the desert... Ho hum. Been there many times. But now, whenever I get bored with pain and suffering I just kick back and pop Battle Royale into the ol' evil DVD player. That always perks me up. After watching 40+ kids get blown the fuck away for two hours I'm ready to start pokin' fun of the Creator for a good few days with a smile on my evil, rosey cheeks. This movie could have used some unnecessary nudity and sex somewhere in the course of its storytelling, but it's got MORE than enough maiming and skewering to make up for it.

As almost perfect an artform as can be expected from such a lowly species. But I will only give BR one out of two thumbs up cause I hate you for liking it too.