The rebellious, self-pitying, defiantly melodramatic spirit of youth mingles with a queasy adult sense of concern. What are we going to do with these kids? What are we doing to them? “Battle Royale,” a gaudy, gruesome comic book, tackles these questions with a verve that is both earnest and impish. Quentin Tarantino has called it one of his favorite movies, and if he had ever tried his hand at an after-school special or a John Hughes high school morality play, it might look something like this.

Each year, in accordance with the Battle Royale Millennium Act — enacted to address unemployment and youthful lawlessness — a single class of ninth graders is selected for Hobbesian self-destruction. There is no ritual of “reaping” and no televised spectacle, as in “The Hunger Games.” The students, dressed in their school uniforms, are told that they are going on a field trip, only to find themselves under armed guard on an overgrown island.

Forty youngsters from Class 3-B have made the trip this time, and they are amazed to discover that the man running the grisly show is a former teacher, played with stony, soulful menace by the great Japanese director and action star Takeshi Kitano.

Mr. Kitano is, for most of the movie, a marginal presence, an emblem of maturity in a world of children run amok. As the body count is tabulated on screen — and by dutiful functionaries in a relatively low-tech command-and-control center — the relationships among the students come to the fore. A season’s worth of mean-girl, nerd-and-jock soap opera is compressed into 114 swift and sanguinary minutes. Awful deaths (and hysterical reactions to them) punctuate declarations of love and friendship, revelations of treachery and heavily armed expressions of angst.

Mr. Fukasaku, whose long career included seminal yakuza films of the 1960s (and whose son, Kenta, the author of the “Battle Royale” screenplay, would complete a 2003 sequel) has a punchy, efficient style. He also has a remarkable command of the emotional nuances of action that may be the source of Mr. Tarantino’s admiration. His expertly choreographed scenes of mayhem are at once comical and appalling, and his young cast embraces the melodramatic extremity of the story with impressive conviction.