Fukasaku | 2000 | Japan

So glad I saw this for the first time in a cinema (where it paradoxically played as a “cult classic” to a sold out auditorium on a cold Monday night). One of those experiences where you can appreciate how original this would have been contemporaneously while also clocking how undeniably influential it’s been on movies for the last quarter of a century.

Once again, I can thank my newfound fondness for manga for helping me appreciate the absurdity of the proceedings – including and especially the ending – rather than feeling overwhelmed by it. Helped to have a game audience who were willing to laugh at some pretty dark stuff (at which we were meant to laugh).

The first act of this – all swelling orchestral music behind cartoonishly loud sound effects – is truly thrilling. You’re either on this ride or you are most definitely not. That it only manages to get weirder than the basic premise of a class of 9th graders being legislatively compelled to fight to the death is the great joy of the experience.

And I suppose that’s what makes it all work – that at the end of the day, you more or less believe these kids are 9th graders who find themselves in a patently absurd situation. Nobody acts appropriately; there is no appropriate way to act.

Strangely, you walk away from it feeling vaguely as if you’ve just been swept away by a romance? I’m not sure how they pulled that off but I look forward to enjoying repeated viewings (at maximum volume) as I attempt to figure it out.