Battle Royale

Only the unflinching insanity of Japanese cinema could produce something that sounded so wrong, but played so right. In the future, the government attempts to control juvenile delinquency by dumping a class of teenagers on a remote island, where they are forced to kill each other with a variety of objects while wearing exploding neck braces. It's a testament to director Kinji Fukasaku's propulsive skills that the whacko premise never stopped you from being right there with the kids as their raw survival instincts kicked-in, and hierarchical teenage power games came to the fore.

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