Every once in awhile a film comes along that makes you change your mind about the direction of movies. Daring, innovative, it grabs you, assaults your senses and makes you reconsider everything you know about motion pictures. Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale has pretenses of being just such a movie, or perhaps its accurate to say that its fans have pretenses of Battle Royale (henceforth, BR) being just such a movie. They're wrong, though it definitely is one the most interesting films thus far this decade.

Like many Japanese films (and anime), BR is a symphony of violence which begins with the most threadbare of plots. We are told, by way of that Japan's economy has worsened in the new millennium, and with the economic decline students have turned against their parents and teachers, boycotted school, and in general become malcontents. (This theme is familiar, of course, to anyone who has seen A Clockwork Orange.) In response, the government passes the "BR Act," which requires a high school class to be sent yearly to a deserted island to fight to the death in a battle royale. The students must kill each other within three days or they will all die thanks to explosive necklaces that each must wear.

Does it make sense? Absolutely not. Is it easy to overlook the absurd initial premises and still enjoy the film? Yes.

Some will look at the movie and see in it some vague warnings about the extremes of government. "Look at the creeping fascism inherent in the BR concept!" But if there is any fascistic impulse being parodied here, it's the love of reality TV. The core of fascism and all forms of totalitarianism has always been the (often spontaneous) hatred of the masses for an "other." The desire to see the other suffer is a great animating force for mass movements, and though we conventionally think of violence against the other perpetrated in Auschwitz and the Gulag, it seems equally plausible that the other could be made to suffer through reality TV. This is what BR essentially achieves in its presentation of a kind of fascistic "Survivor."

Or, to cut through all this highfalutin' crap I've written, this movie is Quentin Tarantino meets Lord of the Flies.

So long as we don't take it too seriously as social commentary -- yes, it tells us that reality TV is ultimately dehumanizing, but there's more to the film than that -- BR works on a darkly comic level. The choice of Beat Takeshi (twitch and all) to play the role of the children's school teacher was nearly perfect, as no other Japanese actor working today comes close to his level of "just-about-to-go-postal"-ness. (He manages to simmer beneath the surface without being campy ala Pacino.)

Most of the other actors are effective in their roles -- which are basically horror movie victims when you get right down to it -- yet I was disappointed to not see more of Chiaki Kuriyama (Go Go Yubari from Kill Bill). As Chigusa, her role is decidedly minor, which is a shame given her intensity. As she wields her knife, we see mere flashes of Go Go. Ironically, however, another character, Mitsuko, feels much closer to Go Go than Chigusa, and she winds up being one of the film's most intense characters.

What follows during two hours after the gaudy opening credits (cue the block letters!) is a lot of killing, albeit much less than you would see in a film like Kill Bill or Zatoichi. Not all of the deaths are comic. Some are grisly and brutal and shocking -- or just plain stupid. (We have a car. An uzi-toting maniac is chasing us. Do we drive away or let him gun us down?) Still, more than a few scenes left me almost laughing at the impending doom of the characters, sort of like my reaction to the first Scream. (One scene in particular involves an inevitable mass killing that begins with a misunderstanding. We can see it coming from a mile away, but we're still drawn to watch the bloody spectacle.)

The film also draws upon videogames and anime as much as reality TV, and one main villain of the piece (note that despite the premise, only a few of the characters actually go the Hobbesian route) resembles Sephiroth from the game Final Fantasy VII, right down to his walking through fire and seeming indestructibility. What's more, the characters get pulled into oddly philosophical dream sequences, and that, coupled with the orchestral music, gives the film a bit of an Evangelion vibe.

Assuming you can stand the carnage, then you too might agree that the director hits a wrong note with the ending. In the extended special edition of BR I have, the denouement is so separated from the frantic pace of the rest of the picture as to feel alien. It's not bad enough to spoil the movie, but I wish things had been different.

Though not earth-shattering, BR is a good film, and makes for interesting dinner party conversation next time you feel the need to talk about how nutty Japanese movies can be. (Yes, I've had that conversation.)

Rating:  3 out of 5 stars

Casshern is an absolutely gorgeous film whose setting has little connection to the world as we know it. Indeed, other than a few shared names, the imaginative manga world brought to life by the filmmakers is completely alien to us. The look of the film may well be thought of as "analog high-tech" or "steampunk"; clockwork robots bring death and destruction, locomotives the size of small towns rumble across the landscape, and armies don uniforms and wield weapons which suggest World War I. Parts of the film, especially the political backstory, also recall the visuals of the Dune movie. The hero, Casshern, is also representative of this synthesis of new and old. He wears a suit of body armor which vaguely resembles the old knights of Europe, but is equipped with rocket engines that allow him to soar ala the Rocketeer. What's more, he's the beneficiary of genetic engineering (or is it supernatural intervention?) that has returned him to life and made him superhumanly strong.

So what's the story? I got a little confused along the way, but here goes. Taking its cue from Orwell, the government of the Asian powers in the film's "un-earth," the Asian Federation, has pursued a policy of perpetual war on its neighbors and now on terrorist remnants of "Eurasia." While this war without end has raged on, the people have polluted their environment and fallen victim to all sorts of horrific diseases. (The cliched Shintoist subplot which drives the environmentalism of many, many Japanese films appears here.) The old men who lead the government of Asia have seek out technology to prolong their lives, and they turn to a scientist named Dr. Azuma who is investigating the use of what he calls "neo-cells" to regenerate human beings, from the old men in charge right down to his ailing wife, Midori. A freak accident causes the neo-cells to bring an apparently new race of human beings to life, and government troops sweep in to kill all but four of the self-styled "Neo-Sapiens," who kidnap Midori and head out into the frozen wastes. Meanwhile, the doctor's son, Tetsuya, has returned home from the war in a coffin, and in a flash of madness he uses the neo-cells to bring Tetsuya back to life to have him rescue Midori. Hence, Casshern is born. The Neo-Sapiens, ensconced in their Germanic castle fortress, declare their intent to eliminate the human race, and soon roll out a three-pronged swastika flag and an army of robot stormtroopers, so you know they're serious. Can Casshern stop them? Can moviegoers endure the convoluted plot?

This brief summary of Casshern illustrates that Asian comic book movies and American movies have a common weakness: when trying to pull together a story that has evolved over years and sometimes even decades of printed comics, the editor's job becomes a nightmare. Sadly, Casshern is a film that is in dire need of more editing and more direction, since lush visual spectacle can only go so far. Even though the movie seems to go on forever -- it's nearly 2 and a half hours long -- precious little time is spent developing the characters or giving individual actors a chance to shine. Instead, it seems director Kazuaki Kiriya decided that visuals, not people, own this picture, though it would be a mistake to assume that, in this film, visuals equals to special effects. There is a great deal of psychological imagery which echoes the ending of 2001 and the more introspective episodes of the anime Evangelion and corresponding scenes in the movie Akira. Throughout these scenes, we are asked to meditate upon the deep-rooted anti-militarism of present-day Japanese culture and the savage militarism of Japanese past. One subplot involves ethnic cleansing of the "ancestors" of the people of the Asian Federation. The ancestors have a distinctly Chinese look to them, and this is no coincidence. As the film unfolded I found myself thinking that Casshern might be the most beautiful anti-war movie ever made, though it's far from the best of that genre.

Incoherent yet awe-inspiring, Casshern hints at the amazing film it could be, but disappoints us with the above-average film that it is. Still, it easily ranks as one of the top movies I've seen adapted from a comic book.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Some films are incoherent because the director is unsure of his vision. Takeshi Miike's Ichi the Killer is incoherent precisely because the director is sure, and he wants to stun our senses. And stun us he does with over-the-top violence and a bizarro-world plot in a film best characterized as horror even though it's often billed as drama/action.

Ultra-violence may have first entered our lexicon thanks to Clockwork Orange, but it takes a movie like Ichi to really do justice to the term. Some of the violence in this movie comes with the pump-and-bladder aterial spray Japanese action movies are known for, while other scenes rely on (frankly fake-looking) CG gore. This is not a film for anyone easily offended by violence, and frankly I found it difficult to watch at points. Violence in and of itself doesn't upset me, mind you, but I expect some kind of telos, not violence for violence's sake. Yet violence for violence's sake is precisely what Ichi offers -- it certainly isn't offering us a hero.

The anti-hero of the movie, Ichi, gets star-billing. He is, for lack of a better word, a passive-aggressive manchild with a psychosexual obsession that leads him to extreme violence against men he identifies as "bullies," along with some women. (Women in particular get horrific treatment in this picture.) Sporting a costume that resembles nothing so much as roller-derby gear, but with blades on his feet instead of wheels, Ichi slices, dices, and makes julianne fries of the movie's throwaway yakuzas. But not all yakuzas are created equal: enter Kakihara.

If someone decided that Tyler Durden from Fight Club should be Japanese, sport extensive body mutilation, and go full-out into sado-masochism, he might wind up as the yakuza lieutenant turned yakuza boss Kakihara. If nothing less, they share the same wardrobe. Sporting bleached-blonde hair, a scarred body, and a double-hinged jaw (which he can open ridiculously wide like a snake when it swallows an egg), Kakihara chews up the scenery -- and other gangsters -- like no film villain in recent history. He resorts to torture and murder at the drop of a hat, and isn't above cutting off part of his own tongue just to freak out a rival. In directing the character of Kakihara, Miike seems desirous of having his villain out-Sade Sade, out-Rasputin Rasputin, and out-Tojo Tojo. And he succeeds in this effort.

The plot basically involves Ichi's manipulation by a third party intent on annihilating Kakihara's yakuza clan. Even though Ichi's "victims" are the scum of the earth, I took no satisfaction in watching him work, unlike the Bride in Kill Bill. My problem is that there's no real point to Ichi's killing. He's a tool in the hands of another man, and it's impossible to root for him. Even Kakihara, who gives Milton's Satan a run for his money in making evil seem seductive, is just plain too evil and inhuman to identify with. Seeing the two pitted against each other was like watching the Iran-Iraq war all over again. In the words of Henry Kissinger, it's a pity someone has to be a winner.

Violence is the bread and butter of Ichi, and if you want to see how well a hyperviolent manga can be adapted into live action, this film can be considered a remarkable piece of work. But if you want just a smidgen of identifiable humanity in your horror movies, or you want your gangsters to be people too, this is a film to be avoided.

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Tetsuo: The Iron Man is one of those films which literally defies explanation. In fact, I can practically see the director sitting back and saying, "Go ahead, just try to understand my film."

I can only explain the film by way of an analogy: Tetsuo is what would happen if David Lynch had been a Japanese body modification enthusiast who decided to make a feature-length Nine Inch Nails video after spending a night dropping acid and watching a triple bill of Metropolis, The Fly, and The Toxic Avenger before falling asleep on an HR Giger art book.

With that pedigree, some of you are probably thinking, "It's weird, eh?" The answer to that is yes, but, at least where I'm concerned, this is one film where weird does not equal good.

Rating: 1 out of 5 stars