Battle Royale II

What happens when the winners of your past tournament decide to become anti-government terrorists who try to stop the Battle Royale program? Why you send the students from this year's game to go and kill them. That's the premise of the sequel to the mega-hit Battle Royale.

It seems Shuya has decided to stop running and start fighting back against the people that made him go through the BR a few years ago. A new class is chosen and sent to fight and kill him and his army. They land on the island in a very war-movie style bloodbath and then have to hunt down the leader of Wild Seven, Shuya Nanahara. The catch this time? The students are being paired up and if one dies, the other one's necklace will blow up. It's a sick plan to keep them working together and to keep on another alive.

Can the students survive and if they do, can they kill a man who used to be one of them and survived a game himself? The answer is in the movie and you may not want to watch to find out.

Where the first movie was a brilliant statement against the way society is evolving, the sequel feels empty and almost cartoonish or like a video game. A lot of the sentiment is anti-American even though the US doesn't get mentioned by name and there is really no reason for it. I understand that one man's terrrorists are another's freedom fighters but the material this time is mishandled and feels too preachy. This may be because the director of the original movie, Kinji Fukasaku, died during the filming and the duties were passed off onto his son, Kenta.

The movie is rather uneven which is a shame, because its existence mars the original's beauty. You can give the film a look if you like some decent gore, of which there is plenty or if you are a fan of Riki Takeuchi's completely hysterical over the top acting. Don't go in expecting a film with the caliber of the original. Instead view it as a piece to compliment the jingoistic nature of most war films where instead of heroes, we have a bunch of lost souls and confusing imagery that may leave you wondering what the hell just happened.