BATTLE ROYALE copycat

Rating: 1/10 (11 March 2015)

This is not the worst remake in film history. I have never understood the idea of a remake at all. If a film, like "Battle Royale", is so good to start with why on earth do you want to try and improve on it? If you insist on tampering with perfection, why then do you have to try to recreate it in it's whole? There is nothing original here. Gary Ross put nothing of himself into this film.
They say imitation is the highest form of flattery, but this is ridiculous. There are a lot of sides to a parable as complex as Battle Royale, and I suspect that Ross may have wanted to explore them. Instead the studio forced him into sticking to a cheap imitation of the popular Japanese classic. Tatsuya Fujiwara turned in a performance that lead to one of the most memorable characters in film history and it would have been impossible for any actor, no matter how good to recreate that. The rest of the characters are stuck just as tight to similarly wooden imitations of the originals. It is almost painful to watch very talented actors (namely Donald Sutherland) have that talent stifled.
In the end, Gary Ross set out to pay homage to a great film. Instead he cheapened it, and created a movie that is not worthy of late night cable.