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.
Direction
Fukasaku was 70 and made this his final masterpiece. Pure spite.
Acting
Takeshi Kitano's dead-eyed exhaustion is the performance of his career.
Writing
Every death hits like a gut punch because you actually remember their names.
Director
Kinji Fukasaku
Tatsuya Fujiwara
Shuya Nanahara (Boy #15)
Aki Maeda
Noriko Nakagawa (Girl #15)
Takeshi Kitano
Kitano
Taro Yamamoto
Shogo Kawada (Boy #5)
Masanobu Ando
Kazuo Kiriyama (Boy #6)
Ko Shibasaki
Mitsuko Souma (Girl #11)
Chiaki Kuriyama
Takako Chigusa (Girl #13)
Takashi Tsukamoto
Shinji Mimura (Boy #19)
Sousuke Takaoka
Hiroki Sugimura (Boy #11)
Sayaka Kamiya
Satomi Noda (Girl #17)
Takayo Mimura
Kayoko Kotôhiki (Girl #8)
Ren Matsuzawa
Keita Îjima (Boy #2)
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Fukasaku was a teenager during WWII and survived bombings that killed his classmates—he directed this as a furious response to adults sending youth to die.
The film was banned or heavily cut in several countries and didn't officially release in the US until 2011, eleven years after it influenced an entire generation of dystopian YA.
JP
