If you've made it this far on the page, you probably know the premise of this one. One of the survivors of the Battle Royale game seen in the original movie has formed a terrorist group and declared war on all adults. The BR II act is passed, and now a high school class has been chosen to don the explosive collars and go after the terrorists in the interest of showing the younger generation who's boss (with the people in charge forgetting that they're in this mess because of the Battle Royale games). After the masterpiece that was the original Battle Royale, it sounds like that there's a lot of potential for BR II. Sadly, somewhere along the line they forgot what made the first movie so memorable.
Part of what really made the original movie was showing how the students related to each other before and how it affects their interaction now. It explores the tragedy of a group of friends forced to kill each other to satisfy the whims of a paranoid and desperate government. However, there's almost no character development for any of the new students. Sure, we see plenty of development and back-story for the survivor of the original Battle Royale, but we learn almost nothing about the new students other than certain blatant stereotypes. The lack of development is emphasized even more by the fact that the last third of the movie is peppered with lines like "I always loved you" or "I'll never forget you, so-and-so," even though there is no past context to give these remarks any significance.
The teacher, likewise, isn't nearly as interesting as Kitano in the original. Kitano could be sympathized with, somewhat, and was a tragic figure in his own right. He could at least be understood. The new teacher, though, is an over-the-top cornball played by an actor who does nothing but chew scenery and gives a high school-grade acting performance. The character contributes very little of value to the movie, but his eventual death winds up meaning absolutely nothing to the audience when the time comes, nor does it really mean anything to the characters in the movie.
One thing the movie overdoes is blaming the problems of the entire world on the USA. While I can handle the anti-American sentiment itself that the movie carries (most likely as part of a statement it attempts to make about terrorism), the movie spends far too much time harping on the evils of the United States to build a memorable message about the subject. It's like watching a small child point a finger at someone and call them a "stupidhead" over and over.
The movie's fine for the first half or so. But it really should have spent more time having the kids deal with the fact that they've been drafted to kill the enemies of the government that wants them dead. But it breezes through the early parts of the conflict just to have the students team up with the revolutionaries they're being ordered to kill. The first half of the movie should really have been the first three-quarters. We don't have enough time to get to know these kids to really care about their personal motives for dealing with the situation. They're just a plot device to connect viewers with the survivor from the original movie, when they could have been so much more. In this movie, the students are forced to team up against their targets, linked in pairs via the collars (when one member of a pair dies, the other dies as well). This is a dynamic that really could have been explored more. But after the students meet up with the terrorists, Battle Royale II becomes just another war movie.
There was a lot in this movie that could/should have been addressed, but it spends too much time with the terrorist leader suffering from angst related to his mission. We're forced to spend all of our energy paying attention to this single character rather than being able to really get to know the students who are the true victims here. Even after all pretense of the Battle Royale game is utterly gone, the movie still gives us on-screen text identifying who's died and how many kids are left. The thing is, though, that it's obvious that it only does this because the original did it, even though it really has no effect in BR II. In this movie, we don't get to see the students enough to really worry about which ones died. We got to know the kids in the first movie, and we all had our favorites, and it was chilling to think of them being treated like non-player characters in a video game via this 'scoreboard' effect.
There were a number of devices and bits in the original movie that stick with you, make it memorable, and give you something to talk about with friends who've seen it. But they forgot or cast aside most of that for this sub-par sequel. While the first movie would have you asking yourself what you'd do if you were in that situation, all this movie has you asking yourself is why you spent the time and money to watch it.
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