Three years after the events of the first “Battle Royale”, survivor Shuya Nanahara’s terrorist group ‘Wild Seven’ have declared war on the adults who forced them to fight. Students from Shikanotoride High School are recruited by the government to attack Nanahara’s group; sent to a remote island to assassinate the terrorists. However, things are not that simple as the fresh group of teens are collared and forced to fight with the threat of sudden execution; to add to the danger they are each paried with another student, with the proviso that if one dies or moves too far away from the other, both collars will explode. The teens set of to the island, cheered on by their teacher Takeuchi (Riki Takeuchi).
Following the death of Kinji Fukasaku, “Battle Royale 2” was directed by Kenta Fukasaku, who also wrote the screenplay for both this and the original. A sequel to the cult classic, it is in many ways trapped by association with that film and would have been stronger had it been a seperate film entirely. This is most apparent in the attempts to tie things together, by having the teens captured, collared and given various rules to obey, despite ostensibly fighting for the government. It makes little sense why the government would choose to hamstring their own assault force in such a way. The film is also not a ‘Battle Royale’ in the sense that presumably one or the other side is Expected to win. This nonsensical plot could be generously read as a black satire on incompetent military leadership, but this may be due more to accident than design.
This time around we have Taku (Shugo Oshinari) and Nao (Ayana Sakai), who are less well characterised stand-ins for Nanahara and Nakagawa of the first film (who also appear here), and Riki Takeuchi’s over-the-top performance as the teacher, distinct from Takeshi Kitano’s memorable turn in the original, but leaning a little too much into the pantomime villain role. Ai Maeda’s Shiori Kitano, the daughter of Kitano from the first film, has an interesting set-up with disappointingly little pay-off.
The film works to an exctent as a satire, featuring a fabricated conflict with a lose-lose situation for the front-line troops while the politicians and leaders are guaranteed to win whatever the outcome. The film lacks the memorable moments of the first, playing out like a generic war movie, which again could have worked as an exploration of child-soldiers and militarism as an inevitable consequence of authoritarianism; but it is hampered by attempting to cleave to the main conceits of the original. An emphasis on spectacle and histrionics fails to recapture the raw power of the first film. There are some strong character moments here and an attempt to create a more emotional story, buoyed by a plaintive violin score. While it pales in comparison to the first “Battle Royale” film, the sequel is not without its moments and its anti-American sentiments are a bold line to take. Worth watching as a curiosity, and more enjoyable if you can dissociate it from the first and appreciate it as an independent film about the destruction of youth at the hands of a corrupt elite.
