86% Battle Royale 3D

All Critics (43) | Top Critics (5) | Fresh (41) | Rotten (6) | DVD (28)

Stylistically it's a beauty, with khaki-uniformed waifs fighting for their lives to a crashing classical score.

Awful deaths (and hysterical reactions to them) punctuate declarations of love and friendship, revelations of treachery and heavily armed expressions of angst.

It may suit a certain worldview, but Battle Royale's cynicism is still a form fantasy-a balm as well as a bomb.

3D conversion of a classic teen massacre thriller raises the gore level.

Departing from two decades' worth of domestic and personal dramas and returning to his roots as Japan's maestro of mayhem, Kinji Fukasaku has delivered a brutal punch to the collective solar plexus with one of his most outrageous and timely films.

Before The Hunger Games there was Battle Royale. The bloody spectacle of Japanese schoolchildren being forced into a sadistic game of "last man standing" packs an emotional wallop.

A gloriously entertaining ride, provided you have a taste for dark material and don't mind the occasional poke in the ribs.

Forgive the film its small flaws of histrionic performances and cheap execution for the giddy rush of its banal, Verhoevenesque atmosphere...

A wonderfully exciting, incredibly idiosyncratic actioner.

Maybe Battle Royale's ultimate punchline is its inexplicable ability to fool some people into taking it seriously.

Battle Royale's dystopia reflects a hyper-tech Japan still deeply concerned with social cohesion and the value-gaps between the generations. It's the disturbingly dark social frame, not its bloody canvas, that makes this a battle worth watching.

Fukasaku's set pieces are dynamic, composed and edited with a neatness that is missing from the shaky-camera esthetic of the movie's successor, 'The Hunger Games.'

Released in time to hopefully capitalize on The Hunger Games, this Blu-ray of a grossly overrated genre oddity is well-transfered but bereft of extras. The rapid fan is advised to pick up the three-disc gift set instead.

Battle Royale is a masterpiece of mayhem, violence and unfettered teen melodrama.

Battle Royale is The Hunger Games not diluted for young audiences.

Pitched with the insatiable verve of a TV game show and the vacant regret of a Grand Theft Auto videogame.

It gets no points for subtlety, but this confronting, devastating, hilarious and extremely fun film is a masterpiece all in its own right.

Gloriously sick and twisted. A masterpiece.

Disturbing, gory, shocking, and very original.

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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/battle_royale_3d/

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