Battle Royale” stands as a definite cult movie, from Takeshi Kitano's presence to the way it inspired Tarantino, to the violent portrayal of youth and sociopolitical criticism unfolds against a backdrop of dark humor and an evocative soundtrack.

| Original Score: 8 | Mar 3, 2024

The "groundbreaking" premise of Battle Royale remains a good black comedy diversion that's more conventional than some wanted it to be. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 27, 2023

It is not simply satire, but social commentary; not simply a sensational over-the-top movie, but an important one as well.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Jun 29, 2023

The last half hour is the most successful, a final interlude of generational warfare, then radical anonymous freedom.

| Sep 15, 2020

Battle Royale is above all a high-concept, action black comedy. Beat Takeshi's performance as Teacher Kitano is one for the record books...

| Mar 31, 2020

Not a face value film, it leaves its audience questioning, reflecting, and debating its hauntingly resonant implications.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 6, 2019

You would never suspect that a 70-year-old man made this film: it positively hums with youthful lust and rage.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Dec 11, 2016

This savage social satire revels in the brutality and gore and plays it for dark comedy and gallows humor, a teen melodrama gone feral as cliques fall apart under fire and young love is literally under the gun.

| Apr 10, 2016

Before The Hunger Games there was Battle Royale. The bloody spectacle of Japanese schoolchildren being forced into a sadistic game of "last man standing" packs an emotional wallop.

| May 30, 2012

A gloriously entertaining ride, provided you have a taste for dark material and don't mind the occasional poke in the ribs.

| Original Score: A | May 25, 2012

Stylistically it's a beauty, with khaki-uniformed waifs fighting for their lives to a crashing classical score.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 25, 2012

Awful deaths (and hysterical reactions to them) punctuate declarations of love and friendship, revelations of treachery and heavily armed expressions of angst.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 24, 2012

Forgive the film its small flaws of histrionic performances and cheap execution for the giddy rush of its banal, Verhoevenesque atmosphere...

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 22, 2012

It may suit a certain worldview, but Battle Royale's cynicism is still a form fantasy-a balm as well as a bomb.

| May 22, 2012

A wonderfully exciting, incredibly idiosyncratic actioner.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 22, 2012

3D conversion of a classic teen massacre thriller raises the gore level.

| May 22, 2012

Maybe Battle Royale's ultimate punchline is its inexplicable ability to fool some people into taking it seriously.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | May 20, 2012

Battle Royale's dystopia reflects a hyper-tech Japan still deeply concerned with social cohesion and the value-gaps between the generations. It's the disturbingly dark social frame, not its bloody canvas, that makes this a battle worth watching.

| May 10, 2012

Fukasaku's set pieces are dynamic, composed and edited with a neatness that is missing from the shaky-camera esthetic of the movie's successor, 'The Hunger Games.'

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 30, 2012

Battle Royale is a masterpiece of mayhem, violence and unfettered teen melodrama.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Mar 19, 2012