The region 1 DVD version of Battle Royale, one of the best movies to ever come out of Japan hits DVD shelves!
For years, fans have had to deal with poorly subtitled versions, bootlegs, region 2 and 3 encoded DVDs and ebay scams, but finally it's available to US and Canadian audiences
This is one movie that is pretty much guaranteed to never get an American remake
The story involves a game in near future Japan where a group of bad seed 9th graders get dropped off on an island, are fitted with exploding neck collars and weapons (some good, some not so good) and have to fight to the death until only one survives.
It's interesting to see the relationships some of these kids have with each other. Some are friends, some enemies, some bullies, even a couple. They are forcd into combat by virtue of the neck collars that will explode if they don't stay within the battle areas (so they can't just run off to the woods and hide out). The zones also shrink as the game progresses.
I noticed even NetFlix has it listed as available January 25th, 2005.
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