Battle Royale II: Requiem

This film is basically guts and gunfire entertainment from Japan.

(WARNING!- A BASIC PLOT OVERVIEW NOW FOLLOWS:) Picking up where "Battle Royale" left off, a new class of schoolchildren are forced to enter the BR 2 program in order to eliminate Nanahara Shuya, survivor of "Battle Royale", and now leader of a group of child terrorists comprised of survivors of the "Battle Royale" program, who have decided to wage war on the adult society that has rejected them.

Firstly, it should be noted that although this film may lead you to ponder topics such as:

The global circumstances that give rise to Terrorism. The traumatic effect of combat on children. The foreign policies of the United States. The breakdown of parent/child relationships within Japanese society.

These things are incidental and not what this film is for.

This film is about the good old "bang,bang you're dead", "No I'm not! you missed me!" playground antics we used to get up to as children, only here it's adults only entertainment. Put any kids you might have lying around the house to bed, hang up your film critic hat and hold onto your seat, because this film is about teen bloodshed and bodycount and there'll almost certainly be tears before bedtime! Yes there's a plot, but if you are going to try to take this film seriously you will come to a major hurdle in the first act, as soon as the class's teacher enters the arena to lay down the rules!

Kids - CHECK, Guns - CHECK,

LET BATTLE COMMENCE!....

It pains me to say that I "suffered" through BATTLE ROYALE 2, the sequel to one of my favorite films of all times.

What's missing from BR2 is Kinji Fukusaku, the legendary action director who helmed the first film and died one day of shooting into this. His son Kenta replaced him.

Everything that made BR1 so amazing is botched badly here. Kenta Fukusaku fails to keep forty-one characters spinning. He fails to bring power and aesthetic catharsis to the film's violence. He fails to marry social commentary to strong exploitation elements.

The first film is referenced plot-wise and musically. The BR rules are altered slightly. Danger Zones still exist. The corpses are counted on screen.

But it's boring. Yes, BR2 is a crashing bore. The SAVING PRIVATE RYAN sequence demonstrates its paucity of ideas. The special effects are cheesy and obvious and the film's efforts to wring emotions out of one-dimensional relationships are pathetic.

I had high hopes. After one hour I just wanted it to end.

Never underestimate the importance of a good director or the genius required to deliver a masterpiece.

I just finished watching BATTLE ROYALE II and was really impressed. A great sequel that lives up to the first, because it adds enough new stuff to keep things fresh. I loved the idea that the students are now forced to become a strike force, and that their collars are now tied together (one dies, so does their partner).

The battles are brutal, although I'm a little iffy on the politics. Anyway, it's a fun, beautifully shot movie that shouldn't disappoint fans of Battle Royale. Definitely adding this one to my collection.

I saw the first BR movie a while ago and I remember how quick the pace was. People would die one after the other and it was just about killing. There was barely any insight on the characters, making it a little dull, but i enjoyed it nonetheless because the special bond between Noriko and Kitano was added.

I expected the same with the second movie, but instead I got the opposite. The plot in this movie is really really lame. They go to the BR place, everyone's acting super crazy, and the main character's best friend dies, just like Nobu. Then everyone dies within the first 30 minutes or so. I also didn't like it how everyone had a partner and if your partner died, you'd die too. They had the important mission of killing a terrorist to complete here, but they just played around.

Though this movie lacked the plot, it made up for it in the meaning. For example,questions are raised. If teens and adults are so different, how do teens eventually become adults? Is it because they eventually realize they can't achieve their goal? And to prevent this disappointment, do the adults need to force this reality on them with violence? This is a very anti-communist movie so i can see why it's controvertial in countries.

Though i think the main message it's trying to send out is that life isn't just black and white. It's alright to be in-between.

So...this is an excellent movie that I would recommend seeing, you will get a lot out of it. And don't worry, the blood is so fake, it's funny. XD

The original Battle Royale is one of my favourite films of all time. It's fusion of extreme violence and a thought provoking, complex substance made for a very different and refreshing movie. The sequel, unfortunately, is merely a stale variation on the events of the first film. It's ironic that this sequel is a complete disaster as making a sequel to 'Battle Royale' should be one of the easiest tasks of all time. It's simple; another battle royale, with all the uncompromising violence of the first, and to continue the story; we'll have Nanahara, survivor of the first film, put back into the frey. Simple. But no; for some reason, the writers have opted for some drivel involving Nanahara becoming an internationally wanted terrorists and an act known as 'BR 2', whereby school children are 'hired' to fight terrorist threats...or something. Now, you might be thinking along the lines of "well, as long as there's school kids with weapons, I'm happy'; but it's no again. The film plays out more like a feature length version of the start of Saving Private Ryan. That's it; it's more or less a simple war film. Damn.

One of the things that made the first film work was the underlying theme that the violence is coming from children that know each other, killing each other. This gave the film a soul-searching horrific edge; "could you kill your best friend" was the tagline, and the film got it's depth from that. Here, that message is gone; and it's replacement is a dull 'anti-war' one. The film piles on the sentiment in an effort to get it's message across, but it never really succeeds. The film also seems keen to prioritise it's 'Requiem' subtitle. Far too keen, in fact. The requiem sequences were the worst thing about the first film; interrupting the adrenaline pumping action sequences all too regularly, I don't doubt that I'm the only person who feels this way. Battle Royale 2 is much like one long requiem sequence, with characters 'reflecting' left and right and the film on the whole suffers because of this. If the film had focused more on character development, the reflecting parts might have worked because we would have cared; but it doesn't, so we don't. Pretty stupid really.

Battle Royale 2 isn't completely devoid of positive aspects, however; the first half hour is definitely good. Going back to how it was in the first film, we see a group of unwitting school children kidnapped by the government and, of course, the hysteria that results in a couple of the kids ending up dead. Although this is almost a complete copy of the first film (we've got knives being thrown, necklaces exploding etc), it works because the first film worked, and fans of the original masterpiece will no doubt enjoy it. However; when I said that I'd have been happy with just 'another Battle Royale', I did mean one that's different from the first one, not just a remake of it. In fact, the sequel takes most of the ideas from the first film and reuses them; from the danger zones to the maniacal teacher who delights in seeing his kids maimed and killed. The only real new idea in the movie is the idea of the 'tag game', which involves the detonators being linked to each other, so if your partner dies; you go too. However, although this is a fairly good new idea, it doesn't make sense.... you see, the government want these kids to kill Nanahara, so why do they make it hard for them? Why not send them in with an army of tanks and just have done with it? Why not just bombard the island with napalm? On that note: I deem this movie ridiculous and pointless, and therefore not worth your time. Even if you like the original as I do; this film is one to miss.