Battle Royale is about a group of teen-agers murdering each other in a gladiatorial contest. If that plot sounds familiar, just be aware that the film came out eight years before Suzanne Collins wrote The Hunger Games. Fukasaku’s epic has also been adapted from a best-selling novel, but tells an even darker and certainly more violent story. In present-day Japan, a law has been passed that requires the yearly selection of a ninth-grade class to be taken to a remote island where they will kill each other until a single survivor remains. In the current iteration, a trio of teens attempts to survive without resorting to violence. Against their gleefully murderous peers, their chances of success are slim. Surreal and blackly comic, with a memorably bizarre performance by Takeshi Kitano in one of the few adult roles, Battle Royale is bloody good entertainment bearing a plangent and admonitory message about today’s youth.



Batoru rowaiaru, Japan, 2000. 114 min. Written by Kenta Fukasaku. Photographed by Katsumi Yanagijima. With Takeshi Kitano, Chiaki Kuriyama, Tatsuya Fujiwara. Anchor Bay Entertainment. In Japanese with subtitles.
Tickets $9 for SFFS members, $11 general, $10 senior/student/disabled. Box office opens July 12 online at sffs.org and in person at SF Film Society Cinema.