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I've seen Battle Royale a few times, and I think it's pretty great. It's by no means a cinematic masterpiece, but there's something about it that sucks me in every time. I think what I like most about it is the tone--it's part action movie, part horror, part sensitive coming-of-age story. Plus it's got a bunch of cute kids in school uniforms annihilating each other, which makes for some truly unbelievable visuals. It's a movie that could never be made in America.
I've heard that Kinji Fukasaku (the director) said the movie wasn't allegorical, but come on: it's a movie about schoolkids from one of the most hypercompetitive educational systems in the world forced to compete against one another for literal survival. Plus it illustrates how solutions are often worse than the problems they purport to solve. It's got a lot of whoa-check-that-out carnage, but at heart I think it's a pretty serious movie.
Bonus trivia: Chiaki Kuriyama, who plays Chigusa in Battle Royale, has a role in the new Tarantino movie (she's the one swinging the mace at Uma Thurman in the trailers).
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