Reminds me of "Battle Royal" but still a great movie !

Rating: 7/10 (27 March 2012)

I really liked "Hunger Games". Even tough it reminds me a lot of the Japanese 2000 Battle Royal, I feel like it used the idea in an interesting and different way. I don't know if "Hunger Game" is a rip off, and personally, I don't care. But I think it would be more fun for those of you who didn't see any of the two movies, to see, at least first, the one that suits your interest best. So I would like here to explain what makes those two so specials and unique.
First of all, both movies are set in a futurist society where a "game" happen in an isolated forest. A random group of adolescents have been chosen to fight to death until only one stay alive.
What makes "Battle Royal" so unique and so good is the fact that each character knows each others. It makes the killing much harder and much more personal. The movie is gory and you will feel the stress and the fear when a character have to kill or will get killed by someone he/she knows. Each character represent a different way of thinking and a different way of dealing with a problem. If you are more of an underground, bloody, but a more human movie, Battle Royal should be for you.
In "Hunger Games", the killing is shown in television. We spend a lot of time with the aristocrat that organized and look at the show. In this environment, everything looks, at first beautiful, but fake at the same time. In this mind set, the characters are also uni dimensional. They almost all look happy to go kill and get killed. The deepness and the interest of this movie does not comes from the battles, but from the sick organization and society that host the game and controls everything. It's a critics of the society and a critics of the way people often show an image of themselves that does not reflect who they really are. If you prefer a mainstream film with beautiful images, a critical political plot, "Hunger Games" suits you best.
So, whether you decide to see the sick emotional "Battle Royal" or the beautiful critical "Hunger Games" you should enjoy a good time. Then, if you like your experience, that does not stop you from seeing the other one after.
That been said, if I had seen "Hunger Games" first, I would have gave it a 8/10 instead of a 7/10. But since I felt a lot of "Déjà-vu" during the movie, the experience was not as good as it could have been. So make sure to see first the one that suits you best, and...
...Bon cinéma !
Joker