Director: Kinji Fukasaku
Writers: Koushun Takami (novel), Kenta Fukasaku (screenplay)
Stars: Tatsuya Fujiwara, Aki Maeda, Tarô Yamamoto
1 Hour, 54 Minutes
Get it from Amazon: https://amzn.to/2ZcZwcq
We get a lot of exposition as we zoom over the title logo.
At the dawn of the millennium the nation collapses. 15% unemployment, 10 million were out of work. 800,000 students boycotted school and crime rates soared. Adults lost All confidence in the youth, so they passed the Millennium Educational Reform act, also known as the BR Act. However, almost none of this has any bearing on the movie itself.
We see a girl that survived the games, and we’re told that she lasted 2 days, 7 hours, and 43 minutes.
We zoom in on a class of around forty with a very tired-looking teacher. Shuya explains that his father hung himself a few years ago. One entire class just takes the day off because they want to. A boy then randomly seems to stab the teacher.
The busload of students on their class trip pass a bunch of soldiers on the road. They all seem like normal kids, not especially violent or disturbed. The bus goes through a long dark tunnel, and they all go to sleep. They’ve been drugged! The driver is wearing a gas mask. They wake up, and each of them are wearing some kind of digital device on a metal collar.
A helicopter lands and the students see the building is surrounded by soldiers. The teacher, Kitano, who got stabbed earlier gets off and marches into the auditorium surrounded by armed soldiers. The entire class is there, plus two additional students. He punches one of the students and explains the law:
They are to kill each other off until there is only one of them left. There are no other rules. Their current teacher was opposed to the selection of this class, but Kitano rolls his body in on a cart. He shows them a video. They are all on a deserted island. The teacher throws a knife through the forehead of one of the students to get their attention. We see on the screen that she is student #18, and there are 41 to go.
The video continues. Certain areas will become off limits at various time,so they need to stay on the move. If they don’t, the necklace will explode. We then see how that works as Nobu, kid #7, explodes. 40 to go. If there isn’t a single survivor at the end of three days, all the necklaces will explode. They’ll each be given supplies and a random weapon, some good, some not so much. One guy gets a crossbow, the other gets a pot lid. One by one, their names are called and they get their bags and run out. The two “extra” students are explained to be particularly dangerous.
Outside, people are already fighting and dying. The countdown continues.
Shuya and Noriko pair off, and we get flashbacks from better days with Nobu, the kid who’s head just exploded. Shuya vows revenge for all this. One of the transfer students kills a bunch of the others and takes a machine gun, pistol, and grenades. A couple commits suicide by jumping off a cliff, and we’re told “31 to go.”
By noon of the first day, they’re down to 23 left. The problem here is that only about half the students take the thing seriously, and the other half are just stupid. All most of them ask are “are you in love with anyone?” and stupid Japanese high school melodramatic stuff like that.
We learn that the two special students are survivors of earlier games. One has sworn to help others and get off the island, and the one with anime hair is the ninja super-killer.
Time passes and so do most of the characters.
When hackers wreck the operations center, the rules get out of control and they adults can’t tell who lived or died. The game ends a little too soon…
Commentary
This movie was the inspiration for everything from The Hunger Games to Fortnite and PUBG.
This is for the gore fans. It’s a juicy, bloody, murder-fest. There are a lot of creative battles and uses of weapons. I’m not sure how any of this helps the country as a whole, unlike the Purge or even the Hunger Games, but we’re told there is a political reason for all this. It doesn’t seem to be televised for entertainment, and none of the kids even seemed familiar with the idea of the game, so it’s not a deterrent. Other than a fun movie, there’s not really a point to all this.
To top it off, most of the people have all the acting skills of an anime character. I don’t know if that was intentional or not, but most of the students posed, and screamed, and bickered over nonsense that only makes sense in a manga. It was, in fact, based on a novel, not a manga.