Japanese schoolkids battle to the death in the near future.

RATINGS

Futurism — 2
“At the dawn of the millennium,” Japan has “collapsed.”  Unemployment is at 15%, and adults fear unruly school kids.

The government implements educational reform laws.  Strangely, these include a provision for a “battle royale”: each year a high school class is randomly chosen, shipped to a small island, and forced to fight to the last person.

It does not seem to very well thought-out as a deterrent: the chance element means that students cannot avoid the danger by good behavior, and the battle royale is so poorly publicized that the students have no idea what is happening when they wake up on the island.

The movie attempts no additional exploration of the society that has given rise to this practice.

It would have been more meaningful if the nature of this new Japan had been explored.  As in ancient Rome, death-games could have served a purpose, in this case to demonstrate the power of the adult society over rebellious youth.

Entertainment — 7
The class of 40-odd high school students has all the usual teen issues–cliques, crushes, and bullies–but everyone is armed, so the issues are resolved with machine guns, axes, and grenades.

Your tolerance for violence may determine much of your reaction to this movie.

Plausibility — 5
There is no inherent reason that a society could not choose this option, but it seems highly unlikely that even a semi-functioning modern society would go this route.  The conditions stated in the prologue are not even vaguely close enough to provoke a reaction this extreme.
Overall rating / ranking — 4.2: 93rd of 121