Battle Royale

Director: Kenji Fukasaku

2000 / 114min / DCP

A cult classic par excellence and a late career smash for director Fukasaku, a veteran of the Japanese genre cinema trenches of the 1960s and ’70s who drew on his own memories of WWII-era carnage to craft a movie speaking to a distinctly turn-of-the-millennium culture of mercenary malice. In the dystopian near future, the Japanese government proposes to curb juvenile delinquency through the implementation of an annual death match, in which an entire high school class are dropped on a desert island and given orders to fight to the death until only one remains, all of this overseen by “Beat” Takeshi Kitano’s military official. A savage, blood-drenched satire of ultra-competitive scholastics, and a blackly funny delight.

DCP from new 4k restoration courtesy of Arrow Films