Bad Teacher [Review: Battle Royale]

A Japanese high school class runs riot, with all sorts of behaviour in classroom and corridors, and pupils bullying and even stabbing their teacher. But this is all in a near-future Japan where, following an economic collapse attributed to a failure of discipline in schools, a law has been passed allowing classes of misbehaving pupils to be kidnapped, sent to an island, given a weapon (or in some cases a harmless item such as a shield or a torch) and some basic supplies, and left to fight to the death, with only the last child standing allowed to return home. And who should appear as the sadistic director of this particular Battle Royale but that same stabbed teacher, glorying in revenge on his former antagonists.

Battle Royale is a Japanese movie released in 2000, starring Tatsuya Fujiwara and Aki Maeda as students Shuya and Noriko, and Takeshi Kitano (the presenter of the original Takeshi's Castle) as teacher Kitano. It's a violent and darkly humorous horror movie, with frequent and graphic deaths. While it's clear that Shuya is the protagonist, most of the class are also given well-rounded characters and their alliances and duels are all played out, so the high number of characters can make the film a little hard to follow in places. Obviously this gets easier as the film progresses and more of the cast are eliminated.

Battle Royale isn't the only movie to portray gladiatorial games - of course Roman gladiators feature in Spartacus (1960) and Gladiator (also 2000), while Arena (1989) gives the concept a sci-fi twist. However there are a lot of similarities between Battle Royale and subsequent gladiatorial stories, particularly the Hunger Games books and films, and the recent Korean TV series Squid Game.

I enjoyed this movie although it does require a strong stomach and a pitch-black sense of humour. I would recommend it as an excellent revenge fantasy for any frustrated teacher. Three shuriken stars out of five.