Movie Description
Battle Royale is a 2000 Japanese action thriller film adapted from the 1999 novel of the same name by Koushun Takami. It is the final film directed by Kinji Fukasaku, the screenplay written by his son Kenta, and stars Takeshi Kitano. The film tells the story of Shuya Nanahara, a junior high-school student who is struggling with the suicide of his father and who is forced by the government to compete in a deadly game where the students in his class must fight to the death, with only the sole survivor being allowed to live. The film aroused both domestic and international controversy and was either banned outright or deliberately excluded from distribution in several countries.
The film was a mainstream domestic blockbuster, becoming one of the ten highest-grossing films in Japan, and was released in 22 countries worldwide. It received global audience and critical acclaim and is often regarded as one of Japan's most famous films, as well as one of Fukasaku's best films. Fukasaku started working on a sequel, Battle Royale II: Requiem, but he died of prostate cancer on January 12, 2003 after shooting only one scene with Takeshi Kitano. His son, Kenta Fukasaku, completed the film in 2003 and dedicated it to his father.
In 2009, filmmaker Quentin Tarantino praised Battle Royale as the best film he had seen in the past two decades, stating that, "If there's any movie that's been made since I've been making movies that I wish I had made, it's that one."
