Mini Film Review – Battle Royale II: Requiem

The other day, I watched Battle Royale II: Requiem; and it was a bit pants! Directed by Kenta, and Kinji Fukasaku, and starring Shûgo Oshinari, Ai Maeda, and Tatsuya Fujiwara; Battle Royale II: Requiem is a Japanese dystopian action film, and sequel to Battle Royale. Set three years after the previous film, a new group of teenagers are selected to take part in a new Battle Royale game; one where they are forced to go into battle against a terrorist group, led by Shuya Nanahara. Right let’s get the important point straight out; yes it’s a bit pants. It’s weak, and sadly takes what is a pretty good idea, and wraps all that up in about 20 minutes, followed by over an hour’s worth of rubbish! But; I have seen even worse film’s than this. It has so many problems though. It’s basically filled with nonsense. It chooses the blood, bombs, and bullets route, and ditches all that wonderful other stuff that made the previous film so good. Yes, it’s about teenagers being forced to kill each other; but the first film had all those charming, peaceful, and sweet, happy moments, sown in-between. This doesn’t! There is virtually no character development at all. There are some good characters, but most of them get nothing more than 30 seconds of fame, such as Natsuki Katō, and Yōko Maki; whose only real development come from not being hidden behind masks for most of the run time. So without all these wonderful backstories, when all the predictable dying of tertiary characters comes along; you just don’t care about any of them; you just shrug your shoulders and move on! The only one you do care about in this case, is the only one with any real development, and backstory: Shiori Kitano (Maeda); whose passing actually feels sad, because out of everyone, she’s the only one you can actually connect with! Then there’s all the other stuff too; most of which just makes it an even longer and continually boring experience. The introduction is far too long; but feels like the speed of light, in comparison to the film’s ending; which just feels like it’s never going to end! And it’s not like an ending where it redeems itself; because it doesn’t. It just drags on, and on, and on! It’s sad really; but it was always going to be difficult for the sequel to live up to the same level as the first film. But here; they just chose one thing, forgot the other, and wasted what was a really good idea!

Also, why are the necklace’s/collars programmed in such a way; that if your partner falls in battle, your collar kills you as well? It’s along the same lines ,as one half of the army dying in battle, and the Generals killing off the other half, for the first half’s failure…IT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE!!!