Directed by:
Kinji FukasakuScreenplay:
Kenta FukasakuCinematography:
Katsumi YanagijimaComposer:
Masamichi AmanoVOD (1)
Plots(1)
42 students, three days, one survivor, no rules. In the near future, Japan is in a state of collapse. With high unemployment and a generation of youth out of control, the government enacts the Battle Royale programme. Each year, a randomly chosen school class is pitted against itself on an abandoned island in a cruel game of survival. With a former teacher (Takeshi Kitano) overseeing the game, this is a fight to the death with only one winner. The rules are simple: - It lasts 3 days - Each player starts with food, water and a random weapon - If more than one player survives, everyone dies - There is no escape. As the roll call begins, each kid grabs a backpack and stumbles away towards death or murder. As the game progresses, terror and panic challenge the students' fragile trust in each other. Some suspect everyone, blindly striking down those who cross their paths. Others form alliances dreaming of a peaceful solution with multiple survivors. Despite the game's brutality, the adolescent players maintain their school obsessions with crushes, petty grudges and their dreams. But as the game approaches its shocking final stages, even this semblance of normality disintegrates. (Madman Entertainment)
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Reviews (9)
Battle Royale is a beautifully shocking murder flick whose absurdity you just have to laugh at (even out loud in a few places). It’s superbly filmed and edited, with locations that are reminiscent of both Bad Taste and Ring. But I'm not a fan of it. The million-dollar idea is half-baked. The initial decadent fun tries to come across as something more at the end and it only gets halfway there. *** SPOILER FOLLOWS! *** The important dramatic motif involving Takeshi Kitano’s character betraying the whole system and the rules of the game for the love of one of the players almost doesn’t work at all and the final ideas that stem from it seem overly contrived in the context of the preceding show.
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The Japanese precursor to all the Hunger Games and similar style films. I rewatched it after years and it had the same effect on me as it did back then. At times it is a chilling, gritty thriller. At times it shows the typical Japanese enthusiasm seen in Japanese tourists. At times the film slows down almost to a halt due to the also typically Japanese sentimentality. The whole film is strangely unbalanced with hardly any detriment to the plot. I especially want to highlight the excellent soundtrack (Radetzky March on the Blue Danube was fantastic), and the unforgettable instructional video. The film was entertaining, terrifying, and thought-provoking at the same time.
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If I recall correctly (and can’t guarantee it), Battle Royale is only the second Asian film to get five stars from me (the first one was the Korean melodrama A Moment to Remember). During the first fifteen minutes I could only stare in disbelief at what was happening on the screen – I don’t remember any film ever shocking so much. Incredibly bizarre and insane (the explanation of the rules!), uncompromising and politically incorrect, I almost couldn’t believe what the Japanese had done. Once I got used to that, I let myself be entertained by the film and how many times it casually slips into the B-movie comedy realm. I’m not going to say it’s perfect, it isn’t, there are many places where it grids with the logic and the execution, but I’m extremely satisfied.
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Anyone out there want to give this a try in the flesh? If so, February 29, Střelecky Island, it’s a date. If you take some good speakers with you, you’ll be able to play the genius soundtrack. Kitano won't be there, but finding a charismatic bum to play the victim for a box of wine shouldn’t be a big problem. The next opportunity will be February twenty-ninth, the year of our lord 2012. I'm looking forward to it, happy hunting!
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A very bold and stylish thriller that owes its undying fame to its controversy. I still have the nagging feeling that even more could have been extracted from such an excellent premise and that cramming ideas about life or deeper meaning into a story like this was a low blow to the viewer, but there’s not much more to complain about. Fukasaku knew exactly what he wanted to achieve, and he succeeded. From the very beginning, it’s a very brisk and, thanks to the shocking content, rather unpleasant spectacle full of blood and violence that fleshes out the human character into the blackest form imaginable. From a filmmaking point of view, it’s an almost flawless piece of work, with an effective atmosphere, excellent soundtrack and developed psychology of the main characters, whom we get to know through small episodes from their past. Of the actors, the most striking is of course Takeshi Kitano, whose character surprisingly has the most depth and most important motive. I won't, and I don't want to ramble on about the message of Battle Royale as a vision of modern society, because it's as debatable as the film itself, I would simply say that Fukasaku is a madman who took great pleasure in letting his imagination run wild. No wonder Tarantino praised this film so much. 80%
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Gallery (40)
Photo © Toei Co. Ltd.
![Battle Royale - Photos](http://image.pmgstatic.com/cache/resized/w663/files/images/film/photos/160/330/160330943_a726cd.jpg)
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