Did I have fun? Kind of. Did it take me 4 hours to finish it? Yes. Did I feel bad about being bored while watching all the kids dying? No. And that all kind of sums up all the problems I had with the movie.

Personally, I’m the person who needs some kind of explanation for the events happening, otherwise I cannot connect to what I see on the screen and I get bored. And we got exactly zero explanations in Battle Royale. What was the goal of the law? What was supposed to be the positive effect it has? What was the motivation make it happen? We don’t know and I honestly cannot think of a truly logical one myself that would make sense in any universe. So the movie ends up with being just… kids killing themselves and each other. And that’s kind of boring.

That said, there were two aspects I did enjoy:

My favorite part of the movie was for sure everyone taking their sweet time dying after being shot 4868374587439 times. They do need to give their final monologues after all.

Jokes aside, one thing I truly liked is how the kids are accused of basically the collapse of moral standards and crumbling society, but as the movie progresses, we see many flashbacks of all the adults who failed the same kids that are blamed now. Great way to showcase how youth is often blamed the negative consequences of adults’ actions and decisions - still relevant 23 years after the movie was made. It’s not the kids that ruined the society, it’s the society that failed the kids.