Disc 3: Battle Royale II: Requiem (2003)

Battle Royale II: Requiem is controversial for a great number of reasons. It completely rewrites the rules of Battle Royale. The students really are just bodies to be piled up in blood. The clever satire of the original is replaced with blatant shaming of the United States.

Despite a very confused message, Battle Royale II: Requiem is a surprisingly watchable film. Three years after the original story, game-breaking survivor Shuya Nanahara is the leader of a terrorist organization called Wild 7. They are comprised of former victors and any child who has ever lost their family to violence. The group has declared war against adults for destroying the world through senseless violence.

The government’s response is a revised Battle Royale Act. A new class of 42 students is paired up, handed automatic weapons, and given three days to assassinate Shuya or face death. If their partner dies, they die. If they separate by more than 50 yards, they both die. Shuya and his team kill without prejudice until his top sharpshooter Saki Sakurai spots the dreaded exploding collars on their enemies’ necks.

Battle Royale II: Requiem was, sadly, doomed to fail as a cohesive film. Director Kinji Fukasaku passed away on the first day of shooting, leaving his screenwriter/son Kenta to write and direct the sequel with new screenwriter Norio Kida. Worse still, Kenta had not directed a film before. By inexperience alone, he lacked his father’s skill in handling young performers.

The result is a film with–plainly put–terrible acting. Most of the young cast goes way over the top to the point of parody. The children in the original film would not scream every line of dialogue while contorting their faces into unflinching masks of anger, sorrow, or pain. The newcomer who gives the best performance only gets one big scene to shine by nature of her role. If the rest of the cast could have balanced her level of animation and realism, Battle Royale II: Requiem could have been a masterpiece.

With that said, the story being told is quite interesting. Fukasaku and Kida zeroed in on a great bit of subtext in the original–the tension between generations–and made it the central motif of the sequel. The terrorists led by Shuya fight because they think they’re defeating the adults. The children in the program fight because the adults force them to. The adults refuse to fight because they believe respect for adults has disappeared from culture. The differences that divide them will never be resolved with bloodshed, yet the next generation follows the prior’s example and leads with a gun, not an open mind.

And what has the previous generation accomplished? In the world of Battle Royale II: Requiem: destruction. The teacher writes a laundry list of countries the United States has done military action in since WWII; it completely fills a chalkboard. Shuya rambles off the long history of Japanese and American attacks on the freedom of their citizens. The children in the game witness their teacher kill two students without blinking before the game starts. The society at large clamors for the blood-soaked victor to emerge from each year’s game. A culture of violence has bred a generation of children relatively unfazed by the sight of blood and guts, making a group of teenagers the most dangerous terrorists the world has ever known.

Battle Royale II: Requiem is not a perfect film. Even with Kinji Fukasaku at the helm, the film would have fallen short. It is weighted for social commentary, not story, which is near-impossible to manage with a cast of hundreds and huge action set pieces. With that said, the ideas are interesting and presented in an every changing paradigm of war and peace that make the film move at a solid pace.

Rating: 5/10

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