BATTLE ROYALE II (2003)

This movie is ridiculous. A new group of students are kidnapped and forced to fight to the death, but this time they're given military weaponry, some small boats and told to invade (D-Day style) an island and kill the leader of a group of terrorists (Tatsuya Fujiwara from Part 1). That might sound cool, but it's terrible. The introduction alone takes 26 minutes, then when we finally get to some action (a beach invasion) it's filmed in that weird shutter speed thing they did in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. It gets real annoying real quick.

Eventually, they make their way to the terrorists compound and they talk and talk and talk forever. At well over 2 hours, this movie was torture. I can't think of any reason to ever watch it. Except maybe to giggle at Riki Takeuchi's insane overacting. His facial expressions are always the best.

Skip it.

Part 1 - Battle Royale (2000)

BATTLE ROYALE (2000)

[Note: This review is for the 122-minute Director's Cut.]

In the near future, the economy is all fucked up and unemployment over 15%, so instead of doing something like taxing religious institutions, legalizing minor drugs, making community colleges / trade schools free and introducing Universal Income...the government picks a random 9th grade class, drop the students off on an abandoned island and order them to all kill each other.  Not sure how that is going to solve high unemployment, but whatever.

I love the idea of a bunch of crazy teenagers running around slaughtering the fook out of each other, but unfortunately BATTLE ROYALE is weak.  The story doesn't even make sense, but even worse is the unforgivable amount of boring flashbacks.  It feels like 20% of the movie is sad ass flashbacks.  When we do get to the action, it's weak as well.  There are a few short bursts of violence that grab your attention, but for the vast majority of the film I was bored.

Uneven pace, zero nudity, distracting CGI blood, lots of falling and tumbling all over the joint, neat looking island, disappointing ending, okay acting, a lot of screaming and crying, one guy with a machine gun that has to have the worst hit / miss percentage in all of movie history...I think he hit somebody for like every 50 bullets he shot.  It's not going to hurt you to watch it, but I wouldn't get my hopes up.

Part 2 - Battle Royale II (2003)