THE INCITE MILL (2010)

Ten strangers agree to stay in a remote underground complex for 7 days in exchange for a big payday. Naturally it doesn't take a genius to realize this sounds too good to be true. The participants are quickly manipulated into not trusting each other and then in their private rooms each is given a secret weapon. Secret alliances form and soon the blood begins to spill...unfortunately for the viewer the blood I speak of could barely fill coffee cup. I'm assuming that THE INCITE MILL is just another version of Agatha Christie's mystery novel "And Then There Were None" and as mysteries go TIM fails yet again. There's pretty much zero doubt as to the winner would be.

Overall, I enjoyed watching Tatsuya Fujiwara since it brought back memories of DEATH NOTE and Haruka Ayase brought back memories of CYBORG GIRL, but other than that I was pretty disappointed by the entire movie. It felt kinda cheap, the violence is on level with a network television crime drama, zero nudity, the tension was nonexistent and the story was promising (although the reason they all got together was just lazy and silly), but ultimately unsatisfying. Not a terrible film, but not worth watching either.

About as bloody as it gets.

KAIJI: THE ULTIMATE GAMBLER (2009)

[Update 03/09/2021: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

I might not be the best person to review this movie since I've never read the manga or seen the anime, but then again that didn't stop me from falling madly in love with DEATH NOTE. I heard about KAIJI because the two stars of DEATH NOTE (Tatsuya Fujiwara and Ken'ichi Matsuyama) reunite in this film and that sounded exciting! And it was, but it was also disappointing because Tatsuya is the main star (and he's great), but Ken'ichi only has a very minor part with probably less then two minutes of actual screen time!

The story is about this dude who has a crappy job with no fucking future. One day he's hard pressed by these evil dudes into going on this cruise ship where he's suppose to gamble away his debt to them (whether or not his debt was actually real I never figured out). So he gambles and ends up as a slave for these people and spends 15 years(?) working on some underground construction. Finally one day he get the chance to gamble his way out if slavery and all kinds of wild shit happens.

I liked the story a lot and enjoyed the movie, but it felt like they were just cramming too much into the movie and skipping right over some important shit. My recommendation is to read the manga first then watch the movie. Personally I liked the story enough that I'm going to try and read them myself before I watch Part 2.

Part 2 - Kaiji 2: The Ultimate Gambler (2011)
Part 3 - Kaiji: Final Game (2020)

BATTLE ROYALE II (2003)

This movie is ridiculous. A new group of students are kidnapped and forced to fight to the death, but this time they're given military weaponry, some small boats and told to invade (D-Day style) an island and kill the leader of a group of terrorists (Tatsuya Fujiwara from Part 1). That might sound cool, but it's terrible. The introduction alone takes 26 minutes, then when we finally get to some action (a beach invasion) it's filmed in that weird shutter speed thing they did in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. It gets real annoying real quick.

Eventually, they make their way to the terrorists compound and they talk and talk and talk forever. At well over 2 hours, this movie was torture. I can't think of any reason to ever watch it. Except maybe to giggle at Riki Takeuchi's insane overacting. His facial expressions are always the best.

Skip it.

Part 1 - Battle Royale (2000)

BATTLE ROYALE (2000)

[Note: This review is for the 122-minute Director's Cut.]

In the near future, the economy is all fucked up and unemployment over 15%, so instead of doing something like taxing religious institutions, legalizing minor drugs, making community colleges / trade schools free and introducing Universal Income...the government picks a random 9th grade class, drop the students off on an abandoned island and order them to all kill each other.  Not sure how that is going to solve high unemployment, but whatever.

I love the idea of a bunch of crazy teenagers running around slaughtering the fook out of each other, but unfortunately BATTLE ROYALE is weak.  The story doesn't even make sense, but even worse is the unforgivable amount of boring flashbacks.  It feels like 20% of the movie is sad ass flashbacks.  When we do get to the action, it's weak as well.  There are a few short bursts of violence that grab your attention, but for the vast majority of the film I was bored.

Uneven pace, zero nudity, distracting CGI blood, lots of falling and tumbling all over the joint, neat looking island, disappointing ending, okay acting, a lot of screaming and crying, one guy with a machine gun that has to have the worst hit / miss percentage in all of movie history...I think he hit somebody for like every 50 bullets he shot.  It's not going to hurt you to watch it, but I wouldn't get my hopes up.

Part 2 - Battle Royale II (2003)