Battle Royale

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. (11/09/2016)

The subject matter may be superficially about endless mindless violence, however, with such a strong creative team producing it, it is a well-shot action movie in which everything works - from the psychological issues of the characters and their presentation to the audience, natural acting, and believably emotional performances, through imaginative and intensely violent scenes, to almost poetic overtones. Within the world of Battle Royale itself, everything might not make sense, or things are not clearly stated - the meaning of the danger zones is not sufficiently explained, and the objective/effectiveness of the whole game is probably also quite debatable, yet as an idea, the movie works perfectly and creates some moments for flawlessly shocking action scenes, which Jinji Fukasaku unashamedly and extensively exploits, and at the same time, thanks to the aesthetics of the savagery and the choice of soundtrack, he can have the movie stamped with the hallmark of a "nobler" kind of art. What else is there to add? I enjoy this picture with big gulps with each new viewing. (06/20/2019)

While I have nothing against Asia, extreme violence, or false psychology, presenting false emotions is inexcusable to me. The idea and the script may be original, but after 20 minutes the film turns into a pointless and unbearably drawn-out bore that cannot even rely on the amazing audiovisual design. The captivating camerawork and the musical accompaniment from the greatest classics, combined with the brutal violence, create a hypnotic synthesis. However, none of the characters grew close to my heart, and I didn't care about any of them. Instead, I found myself watching the clock, aware of the remaining duration of the film. My highly subjective feeling at the end that I had just lost two hours of time in an absolutely incomprehensible way, admittedly made me a little angry. (02/04/2006)

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. (08/11/2005)

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. (07/04/2009)