Battle Royale

2000 "Could you kill your best friend?"
7.5| 1h53m| NR| en| More Info
Released: 20 December 2000 Released
Producted By: Nippan Group Holdings
Country: Japan
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

In the future, the Japanese government captures a class of ninth-grade students and forces them to kill each other under the revolutionary "Battle Royale" act.

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Director

Kinji Fukasaku

Production Companies

Nippan Group Holdings

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Battle Royale Audience Reviews

Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!
Colibel Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.
Steineded How sad is this?
Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.
Prismark10 Battle Royale is Japanese horror satire set in a Dystopian Japan that has entered economic decline, where unruly school kids are taught a survivalist lesson. Beat Kitano plays a school teacher stabbed by a pupil who gets revenge on the school kids he once taught.Just before they are about to leave school the adolescents think they are going on a outing, they end up in a small island. They are told that due to the Millennium Educational Reform Act. society now expects them to take part in a survival competition where they will kill each other and they have to do it in three days. The kids have a neck brace which tracks their movements. If they attempt to take it off it will explode, if more than one person is standing by the end of the third day it will explode. The winner gets to leave the island.They are randomly given supplies and weapons and told to set off on the island. They have to avoid certain zones at certain times or they will explode.Some of the kids immediately go on a killing spree, others commit suicide, some join together to figure out a way to escape. A few of the clever kids try to beat the system.The film does not depict many of the kids as evil, they seem to be just normal teenagers. It does have some graphic ways of getting rid off them and some of it is a bit silly.Battle Royale inspired films such as The Hunger Games. It combines the horror of teenagers slaughtering each other, the state sanctioning such killings and a few trying to beat the system. It is an eerie, disturbing film yet curiously enjoyable. I rather cheered when one of them managed to hack the system and had a plan to teach the adults a lesson.
jaakkosaaristo There is one point which makes this movie valuable, which is that it first puts on screen the Battle Royale idea from the novel that has since reached huge popularity in both movies (Hunger Games) and computer games. The current world top selling on-line multiplayer game (PUBG) is a Battle Royale derivative. Point is, the points will go to the author of the novel, not the movie.I managed to finish this movie without calling it quits in the middle, which happens with many bad movies. But there was nothing there worth seeing. All the ideas are completely unrealistic, badly acted and badly directed soap opera cliches. The utter lack of realism is nauseating, which of course might satisfy a manga fan who would likely "artistically" appreciate the images and so on, but for me that sort of stuff is unreadable and pretentious waste of time and penny. I mean, if you are mentally 4 years old, you'd likely like this kind of stuff; it is a children's story but just in a violent setting. The other nauseating thing is the borrowing of every single cliche of a classical piece in movie history (like Bach's Air) and playing it loudly and constantly in the background. Yes, if you are hit with a stick long enough to lose any concept of sense of style or artistic taste, what will probably be left is like a first time experience of hearing these pieces that have been endlessly overused in every single exploitation piece of crap movie in the West for decades and decades.Then again, the movie eeriely reminded of Verhoeven's Starship Troopers, which is a similar unrealistic "commercial-like" depiction of a fascist reality where young men are drafted to a completely unrealistically violent war. This movie happens to be made 2 years before the publication of the novel. I recently tried to rewatch Starship Troopers but I couldn't, it is simply a nauseating, not because of the violence but because of it is trying to justify the lack of realism with an out-of-this-world story of a dystopian society that bears no realism to it. I dig so many dystopian movies, just not a dystopia where the government "punishes" random kids with random violence utilizing techniques from concentration camps. If there's something wrong in the Japanese society and this depiction hits on some contemporary social issue, I am sure this sort of unrealistic fantasy makes no effort to intellectually address it, and I believe exactly that is the point of indulging yourself into a fantasy instead of trying to actually be critical of your society.
AnewId48 I watched this because someone had mentioned Hunger Games not being original (and nothing is really) and it peaked my interest as I was curious. I went into this thinking it must be good if someone made the connection, but note I still knew it was IT'S OWN THING. So none of this has anything to do with H.G. it's just how I found the movie. Just to start, I saw this was a book and surely the book is better than the movie because surely the movie was like this because of the typical book to movie problem of not enough time to tell the story. The plot is alright, though they didn't go too much into it. Kids are little turds, adults don't like it, let's have them kill each other; in laymen's terms. It started off strong and while overall it was a decent movie I wouldn't recommend spending 2 hours on watching it. It ends pretty much how you think it will, the people you think will win do, and the fights you think will happen do. It's predictable but most movies are. My main problem with the movie is there are just too many characters. I get it's an entire class, but they try to fit too many back stories in. I get that some of them are problems in Japan, but trying to make me feel bad that someone is dying because he never told his crush how he felt? When I did start to feel bad for a character and genuinely felt bad for them, the scene is ruined by the worst death acting I've seen. More than twice, maybe even more than thrice, they'll have a touching moment and then just let their head fall. I got a good laugh each time. I get your head will fall but some of it is unnecessary and out of place. Some of the way people acted out dying was so ridiculous and I couldn't help but laugh. Even in the touching ones, I'd feel and then they'd do the absurd head drop, even if it's not needed (one girl had her head resting on a guy's shoulder but made a point to throw her head forward to emphasize her dying). Aside from the absurd death scenes, they have no respect for realism. SO many characters take at least a dozen if not more machine gun shots and still get back up like they just got punched instead. They'll have two dozen rounds in them but stand back up to try and run or make some plea and it just got to the point where I couldn't take any of it seriously. The blood and effects don't bother me. They're used (mostly) properly and make sense, people are dying of course there's blood. Overall, I couldn't take it too seriously. It's a good movie for some laughs. It's an okay movie otherwise. TLDR, bad acting, too many characters, funny death scenes, okay but predictable. SpoilsAlso the only time someone reloads is the 'bad' guy and it's after you've wondered for the 5th time if he'll run out of bullets. Is he really the only one to get extra ammo? There's only one other uzi we see and I get they'd maybe give him a lot of ammo but if they're going to give a bunch of kids pistols to kill each other, I'm sure they'd give them ammo. So many people but that dude (except the one time because plot convenience) ran out of ammo. I get it'd get boring but if you're going to have them reload at all give some other people a chance. Not really a spoiler but I guess somewhat. At the end in the streets there are flags with the tele-tubbies on them. Just something amusing.
Bill Papageorgopoulos I mean WHO!This movie looked to me as The power rangers that i LOVED at 8 years of age to find out how poor was the acting and the ''effects'' when i grew up..So i actually found this movie as the no.1 (LOL) most favorite movie in Quentin Tarantino's list.Then i found some good ratings so i gave it a shot....The movie is trying hard to make some drama or glorious scenes but its not good..Really poor acting ...I dunno just bad film