BY HITOMI TANAKA

" Can I watch this movie to the end? " I thought as soon as I saw the opening of "Battle Royale." There were a lot of shocking scenes. In its extreme story line junior high school classmates murder each other. "Battle Royale" is a movie that no one could have ever imagined.

This movie is set in a depressed Asian country in which the unemployment rate is over 15%. There had been about 1,200 teachers who died during their duties from school violence. The BR (Battle Royale) Law was enacted to divert the nation's anger against the breakdown of classes and juvenile delinquency and they wanted to train young people to have a strong survival instinct. The government, in compliance with this law, chose one junior high school from the whole country. The junior high school students were placed where no one lived and were given various weapons ( for example: axes, sickles and swords) by the officials and the students killed each other with their weapons for three days until the last one survived. This movie is based on a novel, but the content is a little different from original. However, the setting in which the junior high school students murder each other is the same. The novel reached the final of the 5th Japan Horror Awards but the content was so shocking that the judges criticized it. Why did Kinji Fukasaku, the director of this movie, make a movie of this problem novel?

" 3rd year in junior high school・・・I have a deep feeling for the 3rd year students in junior high school who kill each other in this movie " he said. At the end of the War in the Pacific, he worked at gathering bones from the scorched earth. He walked around gathering arm and foot bones. He thought that when adults told him " Japan is fighting for peace " it was a lie and he could no longer believe adults.

The actor, Beat Takeshi, played the teacher "Kitano" who followed the law, and instructed the students in this movie that they murder each other, otherwise they would be killed. How can they believe adults who would make them do such a thing. Mr Fukasaku inferred that he had had a credibility gap with adults when he was a 3rd year student in junior high school, and modern junior high school students may have same idea. It is also a warning, if Japan keeps going on its present course with the citizens seeking dissipation, Japan may enact something like the BR Law.

It is said that this movie is a problem movie because the images are so very shocking and so the rating for this movie is R-15 but there is a strong message other than the images. The teacher "Kitano" was hated by his daughter. At the end of this movie, he is killed by his students. When he is dying, his daughter phones him and he says these words to her: "Hating someone, needs a lot of determination." These words were directed to the present with so much juvenile delinquency.

Except for the setting in which students must murder each other, this movie shows you their friendship, affection and psychology the in extreme circumstances when they have to kill their friends. It is not too much to say that this is a movie for youth. Also, there are a lot of messages. However, why did Mr Fukasaku express these messages with such shocking images? I wish Mr Fukasaku had expressed them differently.

If Mr Fukasaku did that, 15-year-old children would get his message. I wish Mr Fukasaku would make a movie with the same theme but with different image.

This is extreme so we must keep it away from children. Can you understand the messages in this movie? Also, can you watch this movie for the end?