Battle Royale
is a 2000 Japanese action-thriller film directed by Kinji Fukasaku, and written by his son Kenta Fukasaku, based on the controversial 1999 novel by Koushun Takami. Starring Tatsuya Fujiwara, Aki Maeda, Tarō Yamamoto, and Takeshi Kitano, the film follows a group of junior-high-school students forced to fight to the death by the Japanese totalitarian government. The film drew controversy and was banned or excluded from distribution in several countries; Toei Company refused to sell the film to any United States distributor for over a decade due to concerns about potential controversy and lawsuits, until Anchor Bay Films eventually acquired the film in 2010 for a direct-to-video release.
Plot
In the near-future, following a major recession and high unemployment rate, the Japanese government has passed the "BR Act" to curb the nation's juvenile delinquency, which takes a random class of delinquent students and sends them to the Battle Royale games where only one survivor gets to make it out alive, thus becoming a good citizen of Japan. Middle school student Shuya Nanahara copes with life after his father committed suicide. One day in the middle of the school year, their teacher, Kitano, resigns after being wounded with a knife by Yoshitoki Kuninobu, Shuya's best friend. One of Shuya's classmates, Noriko Nakagawa, picks up the knife and secretly keeps it in her possession.
Cast
- Ai Iwamura
- Aiko Nogami
- Aki Maeda
- Anna Nagata
- Asami Kanai
- Chiaki Kuriyama
- Eri Ishikawa
- Gōki
- Hitomi Hyuga
- Kō Shibasaki
- Mai Sekiguchi
- Masanobu Andō
- Ren Matsuzawa
- Satomi Hanamura
- Sayaka Kamiya
- Shigehiro Yamaguchi
- Sousuke Takaoka
- Takashi Tsukamoto
- Takayo Mimura
- Takeshi Kitano
- Tamaki Mihara
- Tarō Yamamoto
- Tatsuya Fujiwara
- Yasuomi Sano
- Yukari Kanasawa
- Yuki Masuda
- Yukihiro Kotani
- Yūko Miyamura