What
if BATTLE
ROYALE were a cartoon? Would it look like this Takashi Miike film?
It sure would.
Takashi
Miike takes his madness-in-high-school motif (as last seen in LESSON
OF EVIL) a logic-defying step further. This adaptation of the
manga by Muneyuki Kaneshiro and Akeji Fujimura has been described by many
critics as the successor to Kinji Fukasaku's 2000 high school bloodbath
BATTLE
ROYALE. The two films do share similarities. But Miike - as usual
- rockets the entire spectacle into outer space! The result is a motion
picture that's absurdly simple, yet impossible to accurately explain.
Fukushi
Sota plays high school student Shun Takahata, a boy so bored with life
he asks God to throw some excitement his direction. Within seconds of
his prayer, Shun gets his wish. After going to his next class, Shun finds
himself trapped in the classroom with his friends while a daruma doll
starts exploding heads as part of a sick game. Then, after narrowly escaping
the bloody carnage, he and girlfriend Ichika take shelter in the gymnasium.
But they are instantly challenged by a giant good-luck cat intent
on squashing them to death. As
it turns out, this sort of insanity is happening all over Japan (and the
world); young people are losing their lives in deadly (impossible) battles
which are orchestrated by mysterious aliens hovering above cities in gigantic
cubes.
A Japanese
film with optional English, Chinese or Malay subtitles; widescreen format,
totally uncut version at 117 minutes, DVD encoded for ALL REGION NTSC
WORLD FORMAT. Extras include theatrical trailers.
