Battle Royale 2: Requiem (2003)

- written September 2006

Summary: Shuya Nanahara is still loose 3 years after his escape. The government basically shut down the program until a new contest could be created. They found one...and now Battle Royale 2 is alive. They’ve found a school of deviants and trouble-makers and snatching an entire class, once again they are initiated. But there is a new mission this time: kill Nanahara. But a revolutionary always has backup plans...he won’t give in so easily.           Overall: With both the success and the sheer brilliance of the first film, a sequel shouldn’t be that surprising. I’m not shocked. But just because it seems obvious, and even likely one could be made...doesn’t mean anyone has to. The film had a lot to live up to and clearly doesn’t come close. There are more than a few problems with the film and I’d hate to waste an hour of your valuable reading time discussing them all. But try these. Consider what made the first film work...it’s placing these young kids in a battle atmosphere and the only way out is to kill your friends. This film, we have one side versus another and as they reach Shuya’s island, we’ve basically got a repeat of the “D-Day invasion” from the Spielberg film “Saving Private Ryan.” It’s such a copy...but worse, ½ of the cast dies before they make it off the beach. So imagine now, you’re about 20 minutes into the film and already ½ your cast is dead...and the film has almost 2 more hours to go!!!! In addition, you have this whole “Deadlock” thing going on. The kids have these “necklaces” such that everyone has a partner and one gets too far away from the other person, they both die. You lose at least ¼ of the survivors via this route too. So with 40 minutes into the film, you have about 10 of the 43 school kids left alive. And the film basically failed right there. It had nothing left to occupy it’s time.           It’s also a very anti-American film. Now for those of you living outside the U.S., then this may not bug you. I live in America and it didn’t particularly bug me…but it sure didn’t help the plot at all!!! Your point of the film is to get the kids to kill each other and have your bad guy try and change the ideas of the conscripted kids. So who cares if the U.S. has been bombing Iraq or Afghanistan? And the whole point of having America fire missiles at the island during this kid on kid combat is silly and distracting. The film basically forgot what it was trying to accomplish and spent a ton of time with kids doing some “self-examination” and rethinking their attitudes about life and society…and it’s all bullshit. It wants to have some societal impact but it’s a sequel that has nothing new to say that the first film didn’t already address. So just skip it.           Comparison: Battle Royale meets Saving Private Ryan

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