| Field | Details |
|---|---|
| Movie Name | Battle Royale (2000) |
| Director | Kinji Fukasaku |
| Writer | Koushun Takami (novel), Kenta Fukasaku (screenplay) |
| Lead Actor | Tatsuya Fujiwara |
| Cast | Tatsuya Fujiwara, Aki Maeda, Taro Yamamoto, Takeshi Kitano, Chiaki Kuriyama, Kou Shibasaki, Masanobu Ando, Sosuke Takaoka, Takashi Tsukamoto |
| Genre | Action, Drama, Thriller, Sci-Fi |
| Release Date | December 16, 2000 (Japan) |
| Duration | 1h 54m (114 minutes) |
| Budget | ¥4.5 million USD (approx.) |
| Box Office | ¥3.11 billion JPY (approx. $30 million USD worldwide) |
| Language | Japanese |
| IMDb Rating | 7.6/10 |
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Battle Royale (Batoru rowaiaru) is based on the Japanese novel (and subsequent manga) wherein a future society, in an effort to discipline and control the population of its dissident youth, develops a program in which random high school classes are placed on an island where they are forced to kill each other off in a real life game of Survivor (sans Jeff Probst). And I thought I had a tough time in grade 9!
I enjoyed the book, and was happy to find that the movie follows the text rather closely, with only a few changes, some of which were unnecessary (the villainous bully in the movie volunteered to join the “game” for sport, whereas in the book, he’s just a badass) and some of which were just bizarre (the instructor’s childlike painting). Actually, the major improvement in the adaptation from page to screen is that it’s much easier to remember people’s faces than it is to remember 30+ Japanese names.
I’m sure we won’t be seeing an Americanized remake any time soon not as long as kids keep killing each other in real life. It’s surprising a movie like this was ever made. A case could be made for social commentary, but that’s really stretching it since this is essentially two hours of teenagers shooting, stabbing, poisoning, hacking, bludgeoning, electrocuting, decapitating, blowing each other up. We certainly won’t be seeing an American version of the sequel, in which our hero Shuya becomes an anti government terrorist.
If you can ignore the logistics of the plot, and don’t mind unnecessary violence (which is 95% of the movie) then you’ll likely find Battle Royale an enjoyable bloodbath, but the book is better in that it fleshes out the relationships between characters and isn’t tantamount to watching a video game.
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