The Film
When Battle Royale came out in 2000, I was 19 and just really getting into foreign language films. Like many of my generation of cinephiles, it was an early part of my DVD collection. While I enjoyed it though, I have to confess that I’ve not been back to it for over 15 years, and I never used it as a jumping off point to discover more of its director Kinji Fukasaku’s work. On this evidence, that was an error.
After a failed rebellion in which 37,000 Christians are massacred, their leader Amakusa Shiro (Kenji Sawada) returns from the dead, pledges his soul to the Devil and becomes a demon who can resurrect others to join him in his quest for vengeance. This is an interesting jumping off point for the film, because for much of the opening half hour, as Shiro gathers his band of demons (including swordmaster Miyamoto Musashi (Ken Ogata), murdered wife Hosokawa Gracia (Akiko Kana), psychopath Hozoin Inshun (Hideo Murota) and the conflicted Kirimaru (a young Hiroyuki Sanada)) the film could easily be positioning him as an anti-hero. Shiro—or rather the demon that has possessed him—is clearly evil, but his anger at a Shogunate that piled the bodies and decapitated heads of Christians high is hardly unjustified.
This first half hour builds the atmosphere brilliantly, with each new demon recruited in a vignette “Hell; Chapter 1”, etc. From the corpse-strewn nightmare of the sequence that introduces Shiro to the young swordsman Kririmaru being killed in an ambush and wanting his life to go on, they each situate us in a very different place and moment, with Sawada always bringing a menacing edge as he convinces his target simply to express their regrets.
The antagonist comes initially from one of these regrets. At 62, Miyamoto Mushashi initially says that he is ready to die, but there are still two men he thinks may be better swordsmen than him, so he makes the deal with Shiro. One of those men is Yagyu Jubei (Sonny Chiba), and it is he who ends up hunting the demons, with the aid of a ‘wicked’ newly crafted katana. Chiba is his usual forcefully charismatic self here and, as you would expect, carries off the many fights brilliantly.
For his part, Kinji Fukasaku puts out some incredible visuals here, from that disturbing opening, to the final sequence and its incredible use of fire (a mix, I think, of practical and rear projection elements, but both look great), which, along with what I assume are spells or curses written all over his face, makes Chiba look even more badass than usual. There is definitely an exploitation streak running through the film, with some gratuitous nudity and one nasty, and rather pointless, attempted rape scene. For the most part though, Fukasaku gets the mix of supernatural horror and fast paced sword fighting just about perfect
The pace slows a little in the middle act. With the characters gathered at the end of the first half hour, they don’t stay in a group long enough, and the various strands take some time to satisfyingly knit back together into the final confrontation(s). However, that’s a pretty minor complaint for a brutally entertaining mix of horror, exploitation and action that will scratch all those itches for genre fans.
★★★★
The transfer for this disc is taken from a 2K restoration. As with most of these Eureka releases, there is little to nitpick with the picture, especially considering the age of the film and the likely condition that it’s been shown in on previous outings in the UK. Detail is solid, and the colours look accurate, if not always naturalistic. Some people may be disappointed that the sound is Mono only, but it’s well balanced between dialogue and the rest of the soundscape. There is an English dub provided, if that’s something you enjoy. It’s worth noting that one short scene has to be subtitled, because it wasn’t available in the export cut used for this track.
There are just a couple of on disc extras. Critic and scholar Tom Mes provides cultural, historical and critical context on his commentary, as well as celebrating and digging into the film itself. It’s a little drier than Frank Djeng’s commentaries on Eureka’s martial arts releases, but a very interesting listen.
Director and Kinji Fukasaku son, Kenta Fukasaku sits down for a 28 minute piece called Samurai Fictions, which finds him discussing his father’s interest in the film, differences between the film and the novel it was based on, and much more. Fukasaku talks animatedly and with obvious pride about his father’s work, and his references back to other films, especially The Yagyu Conspiracy, will probably make you want to investigate more of Fukasaku sr’s work.
