Battle Royale
2000, NR, 90 min.
D: Kinji Fukasaku; with Tatsuya Fujiwara.

Fukasaku’s latest film has been causing storms of controversy regarding its violence-soaked storyline. Does its plot of a government-sponsored survival-of-the-fittest contest among schoolchildren provide a chilling morality play and presage the current fixation with Reality TV? Is its kill-or-be-killed action bonanza a call to arms against mindless violence or a capitulation to its fatal spell? Only the attendees will know for sure.

This article appears in November 2 • 2001.

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Marjorie Baumgarten is a film critic and contributing writer at The Austin Chronicle, where she has worked in many capacities since the paper's founding in 1981. She served as the Chronicle's Film Reviews editor for 25 years.