Battle Royale II: Requiem (2003)
Having survived the deadly game of Battle Royale (2000) Shuya Nanahara (Tatsuya Fujiwara) founded a terrorist organisation, Wild Seven, dedicated to overthrowing the "adult" world responsible for the events of the first film. The authorities strike back by passing the second Battle Royale Bill. Another bus of teenagers is drugged and wakes to find themselves in a military compound with explosive collars round their necks. This time however they are not expected to battle each other to the death but hunt down and kill Nanahara.
The film starts strongly but unfortunately this has a lot to do with the fact it borrows heavily from other films: the last five minutes of Fight Club (1999); the first fifteen minutes of Battle Royale (a virtual rerun); the first fifteen minutes of Saving Private Ryan (1998). This last one comes from the fact that the students' first task is to assault the Wild Seven island stronghold. Approaching by sea in dirigibles (under a "Mission One" caption that explicitly casts the film in videogame terms) they come under sustained and horrific fire from the defenders, instantly losing a quarter of their number. It is an impressive sequence but suffers from an over familiarity with Spielberg's recreation of the Normandy landings which it references at every point. After this bravura sequence the students continue their head-on assault but doubts start to creep in for the viewer. In the original film the arbitrary and unlikely nature of the central premise was part of the point; it was supposed to engender fear and hence instil respect into the non-participating high school students. Here though the government takes the same approach when dealing with a very different objective: the elimination of a highly motivated terrorist group. The message seems to be that as long as teenagers continue to die bloody and pointless deaths the fact that terrorists are free to blow up skyscrapers is a small price to pay. This is enforced by the fact that a helicopter flies helpfully overhead dispensing ammunition and advice to the rookie troops below. Since the terrorists' fortress is made entirely out of scaffolding and corrugated steel and could be razed to the ground by a pair of helicopter gunships you can't help but see this as a lack of seriousness on the part of the government.
This problem stems from the fact that the film doesn't really know what it is. It oscillates wildly between black humour, straight-faced violence and melodrama, punctuated with stabs of out-and-out farce and satire. There is also some very muddy political stuff revolving around the twin motifs of American interventionism and Afghan turmoil, which sits badly with the rest of the film. Excepting the politics, the same was true of the first film to a lesser extent but there the tension of the plot and the central anchor of Takeshi Kitano as the students' teacher held everything together. Neither is true of Battle Royale II. Riki Takeuchi, in the Kitano role, has none of his implacable dead-eyed menace, resorting instead to chewing the scenery and (literally) foaming at the mouth. Nor does the film maintain the tension of its earlier sections. After the initial assault the students come face to face with their opponents at which point all tension is dissipated and the film becomes very baggy. Interesting ideas like the fact that the students are twinned and if one dies the other's collar is detonated are discarded and it devolves into one long shootout as the Japanese government storms the island. Now there's nothing necessarily wrong with long shootouts providing they are shot well but this is like an episode of The A-Team. Tactics do not exist and people routinely stand shooting at each other from distances under two metres. Even more irritating is the fact that the constant gun battles are magically paused for the ponderous final words of characters breathing their last.
There is a great film to be made out about teenagers in exploding necklaces waging war against sympathetic terrorists but this sloppy curate's egg isn't it.
The film starts strongly but unfortunately this has a lot to do with the fact it borrows heavily from other films: the last five minutes of Fight Club (1999); the first fifteen minutes of Battle Royale (a virtual rerun); the first fifteen minutes of Saving Private Ryan (1998). This last one comes from the fact that the students' first task is to assault the Wild Seven island stronghold. Approaching by sea in dirigibles (under a "Mission One" caption that explicitly casts the film in videogame terms) they come under sustained and horrific fire from the defenders, instantly losing a quarter of their number. It is an impressive sequence but suffers from an over familiarity with Spielberg's recreation of the Normandy landings which it references at every point. After this bravura sequence the students continue their head-on assault but doubts start to creep in for the viewer. In the original film the arbitrary and unlikely nature of the central premise was part of the point; it was supposed to engender fear and hence instil respect into the non-participating high school students. Here though the government takes the same approach when dealing with a very different objective: the elimination of a highly motivated terrorist group. The message seems to be that as long as teenagers continue to die bloody and pointless deaths the fact that terrorists are free to blow up skyscrapers is a small price to pay. This is enforced by the fact that a helicopter flies helpfully overhead dispensing ammunition and advice to the rookie troops below. Since the terrorists' fortress is made entirely out of scaffolding and corrugated steel and could be razed to the ground by a pair of helicopter gunships you can't help but see this as a lack of seriousness on the part of the government.
This problem stems from the fact that the film doesn't really know what it is. It oscillates wildly between black humour, straight-faced violence and melodrama, punctuated with stabs of out-and-out farce and satire. There is also some very muddy political stuff revolving around the twin motifs of American interventionism and Afghan turmoil, which sits badly with the rest of the film. Excepting the politics, the same was true of the first film to a lesser extent but there the tension of the plot and the central anchor of Takeshi Kitano as the students' teacher held everything together. Neither is true of Battle Royale II. Riki Takeuchi, in the Kitano role, has none of his implacable dead-eyed menace, resorting instead to chewing the scenery and (literally) foaming at the mouth. Nor does the film maintain the tension of its earlier sections. After the initial assault the students come face to face with their opponents at which point all tension is dissipated and the film becomes very baggy. Interesting ideas like the fact that the students are twinned and if one dies the other's collar is detonated are discarded and it devolves into one long shootout as the Japanese government storms the island. Now there's nothing necessarily wrong with long shootouts providing they are shot well but this is like an episode of The A-Team. Tactics do not exist and people routinely stand shooting at each other from distances under two metres. Even more irritating is the fact that the constant gun battles are magically paused for the ponderous final words of characters breathing their last.
There is a great film to be made out about teenagers in exploding necklaces waging war against sympathetic terrorists but this sloppy curate's egg isn't it.