‎Battle Royale (2000) directed by Kinji Fukasaku • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd

Battle Royale

2000 ‘バトル・ロワイアル’ Directed by Kinji Fukasaku

Could you kill your best friend?

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.

Takeshi Kitano Tsuyako Kinoshita Eri Ishikawa Sayaka Ikeda Tomomi Shimaki Tamaki Mihara Yukari Kanasawa Misao Kato Takayo Mimura Hitomi Hyuga Anna Nagata Kou Shibasaki Satomi Ishii Chiaki Kuriyama Haruka Nomiyama Aki Maeda Satomi Hanamura Sayaka Kamiya Aki Inoue Asami Kanai Mai Sekiguchi Takako Baba Shin Kusaka Ren Matsuzawa Shigehiro Yamaguchi Taro Yamamoto Masanobu Ando Yukihiro Kotani Sousuke Takaoka Show All…

114 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Jamie ★★★★ 41

omfg! such a copy off hunger games but so bad! its gross and all in a stupid langiage! i cant read subtitles and watch at the same time!

plus it doesnt even have any hot boys like peeta or gale in it so why watch? #Team Peeta 4 life!!!!!! #yolo!!!1
Review by Sarah Jane ★★★★ 17

Every boy in this movie looks like he is a character straight from anime. Man, I hate that hairstyle. Then and now.

Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games) says she was inspired to write The Hunger Games after the poverty she saw in Iraq during the war. Uh huh.

Is anyone else buying that bullshit?

Still a great movie 14 years later.
Review by Todd Gaines ★★★★★ 25

Going on a school field trip has never fuckin' sucked so fuckin' bad. Sharing a Kodak moment with your friends. Waking up to a what-the-fuckin'-shit-hell-is-fuckin'-going-on nightmare. A fuckin' outrage as Professor Kitano takes over the class. No fuckin' talkin', not even a fuckin' whisper. A necklace that will fuck you up. Watching your best-mate's neck gush. The transfer students with two very different fuckin' agendas. Watch out, Death Note's finest will light you the fuck up with a pot lid. Mitsuko's smile. The way Kawada smokes. Kazuo, zero lines of dialogue and total fuckin' ownage. The boys from Anonymous try their fuckin' best to hack the system. Yummy spaghetti. The greatest fuckin' lunch ever served at a lighthouse. Kawada vs.…
Review by Naughty ★★★★★ 2

Controversial Cult Classic, incredibly original and highly influential film that puts the Hunger Games to shame!

It has more than earned its reputation for its violence and brutality but the real star of the show is the diverse range of emotions and fears (Good and Bad) that are all too human!

Takeshi Kitano added some serious beaucoup depth and flavor to the film!
Review by YI JIAN ★★★★ 13

Run.

When you've already presented the main plot on the table in the first five minutes, and the rest of it are mostly predictable, what do you use to drive your film forward while keeping it interesting?

Testicle mutilation.

Wait. No.

Characters. That's right. Characters. Good ones. The ones with depth. And director Kinji Fukasaku, or rather, author of the original novel -- Koushun Takami, delivers. 43 of 'em! (Including Kitano-sensei.) The hardest part of telling a story about teenagers stabbing, choking and shooting each other is to make the audience care about them. Once that obstacle is crossed, what we have is an emotional, intense, shocking and insane little cult classic.

What makes Battle Royale even more special is…
Review by your cousin throckmorton ★★★★★ 2

everyone looked like they had fun

Recent reviews

Review by Morgan ★★★★

Fucking cinema.
Review by jonfaith ★★★★½

Donald Richie is suspicious of such stylized nihilism. I am not, finding lapping riffs of image and meaning.
Review by David Smith ★★★★

Was really looking forward to this and then I found out Tatsuya Fujiwara which made it even better because he had been in Death Note. Way better version of Hunger Games cant believe it took me so long to watch.
Review by renelow ★★★

Enjoyed this movie although the dubbing was a bit offputting. Unfortunately we didn't have a subtitled option. Pre hunger games this movie brought up interesting thoughts but I also wondered if this was subtle propaganda telling kids what happens if they don't listen to authority
Review by Justin ★★★½

I always thought I would hate this movie, that it was all provocation and cynicism and fatalism. It is a lot of that, but in service to a satirical skewering of society and culture and an examination of both the good and bad aspects of human nature.
Review by Daniel Storer ★★★★

Battle Royale has clearly inspired films such as the Hunger Games(even if the author doesn’t admit it), and is geniunely a good film! Love the tention, and how you can be following a group of characters who you become more and more connected to and then they get killed. And unlike other fil s where they prolong the death with these movie fight scenes, usually in this film, they cut straight to the point. Battle Royale has some great cinematography, immersing me on this island. Along with that, the characters are diverse in emotion ranging from creepy, ampethetic, strategic, and general fear.
The film does drag in some part especially the last few minutes but overall it’s a good film!
Review by jgmoq ★★★½

故事很經典
Review by ClimaxDome ★★★½

Hunger Games done right
Review by Bark Dongston ★★★★

When you're 8 pages into that research paper and u just gotta chill out and watch some Japanese kids rip eachother's heads off this movie gotchu.
4 Stars.