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Ian Stanley reviews

Distributed by
Universe Laser (HK)

Cert: IIB

Cat.no: DTS6552

Running time: 133 minutes

Year: 2003

Pressing: 2004

Region(s): 3, NTSC

Chapters: 8 plus extras

Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS 5.1

Languages: Japanese

Subtitles: English, Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Simplified)

Widescreen: 1.78:1

16:9-Enhanced: Yes

Macrovision: No

Disc Format: DVD 9

Price: $12.49

Extras: 3 Featurettes, Original Theatrical Trailer, Trailers for 'Battle Royale' and 'Ghost System,' Biographies for Takeshi Kitano and Kinji Fukasaku, Photo Gallery.

---

Director:

Kenta Fukasaku & Kinji Fukasaku

Cast:

Nanahara Shuya: Tatsuya Fujiwara
Shiori Kitano: Ai Maeda
Takuma Aoi: Shugo Oshinari
Nao Asakura: Ayana Sakai
Sensei: Riki Takeuchi

After the release of the original Battle Royale, acclaimed director Kinji Fukasaku announced that he was dying of cancer. Wanting to finish up his life making movies he started production on this and sadly died shortly after filming began. Kinji’s son, Kenta, (who wrote the screenplay for the first film) took up the gauntlet and completed the movie. From the extras on the disc, it is clear that Battle Royale 2: Requiem is a labour of love for Kenta, it's a shame that the film turned out as badly as it did.

Following the events of the first movie, survivor Nanahara Shuya (Tatsuya Fujiwara) sets up a terrorist group called 'Wild Seven' and is involved in a terrorist event that bears a similarity to the 9/11 attacks. With this, he declares war on all adults and then, for reasons known only to him, holes up on an island exposed to attack... In response to this, the adults bring in the Battle Royale II Anti-Terrorism Act. The aim of this new act is to make the kids fight between themselves by hijacking another busload of graduating school kids, suiting them up with weapons and sending then after Nanahara's group. The deal being that they have three days in which to kill Nanahara or they all die. Another twist on the original story is that now the explosive necklaces are linked in pairs, if one of the pair dies then the other dies too!

The film starts out pretty watchable but loses it at around the hour mark; this is because the first hour contains really good scenes that have been ripped from other movies. It mimics the scene in the first film where the class realises what is happening to them, and then it has a beach landing and battle scene that are ripped from Saving Private Ryan. After the first hour it just gets more and more ludicrous until it reaches it’s peak as a major character turns up in the middle of a full-scale assault wearing a rugby costume and carrying a ball… I swear I’m not making this up! The action scenes are different to those in the first film, this is all out war and what looks like an increased budget has allowed them to up the gore quotient considerably.

At one point in the movie one character says to Nanahara after a long speech "I didn’t have a clue what the hell your point was." Watching this I know how they feel. Requiem clearly has a point to make, it's just lost in the midst of incoherent ranting against America's foreign policy. Don't get me wrong, I think there's a good movie to be made about the pros and cons of America's Foreign policy, and the consequences of such, but this isn't it.

Another failing of this movie is that unlike those in the first, few of the characters here are likeable. Unlike in the first film where the class were essentially just normal school kids, the class this time are a bunch of delinquents who dress really punky and have loads of 'tude!!! Nanahara is now an Osama Bin Ladenesque character and spends a lot of his time staring silently into middle distance trying to look haunted and moody. When he’s not doing that he just tends to look stiff and constipated. Riki Takeuchi plays the teacher in this film, considering the character’s history (explained later in the film) he could have been an interesting, conflicted character but for the fact that Takeuchi’s performance is one of the worst that I’ve seen in years… We are talking pantomime level acting here. Matching him step for step in the overacting stakes is Shugo Oshinari who plays student Aoi Takuma.

The deal with Taku is that he’s got a temper problem, this translates as Shugo playing him the same way that Ben Stiller played Mr. Furious in Mystery Men. The effect is the same, they’re both really funny and made me laugh out loud, but Stiller was supposed to. The characters of Taku and Sensei’ could form the basis of a really good drinking game and I’m working on the rules as you read this. The last notable player is the one I found to be the most sympathetic, Ai Maeda plays the character Shiori Kitano, the daughter of the teacher in the first movie. A flashback scene between her and Takeshi Kitano is probably the best of the movie.

The picture on this disc is Anamorphic, framed at approximately 1:78:1, and is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, the print used is spotless and I couldn’t see any compression problems. On the other the black level seems a bit weak, with the blacks coming over more as greys and this lends the picture somewhat of a slightly murky, washed-out look. As it is, the picture’s very good, but it could have been superb.

The sound comes it two flavours, Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1, both in the original Japanese language. Both soundtracks are excellent with a lot of use being made of all six speakers. The DTS probably just edges ahead but you won’t be disappointed by either of the soundtracks. The English subs are very good with only the occasion spelling or grammatical error.

All of the extras are placed are placed on Disc Two, the main extras take the form of three featurettes and surprisingly all of them have English subtitles.

The first is called BRII: Behind The Scenes (7:51) and is pretty much what it says it is, candid footage of the rehearsals, the production and the wrap party. It is quite surprising just how candid some of this footage is and shows that Kinji Fukasaku ran quite a tight ship. He is very ‘direct’ to some of the actors who are not performing as well as he would like, and it makes you wonder how the film would have turned out if he had lived to finish it. What is quite affecting is the footage of the wrap party when Kenta, stood in front of a makeshift shrine for his father, thanks the crew for their efforts on the film, his voice breaking with restrained emotion. It’s a pity this one doesn’t run longer and go into more detail, like the main featurette on Tartan’s disc for the first movie.

The second is somewhat misleadingly titled BRII: Making Of when the Actual title seems to be BRII: Digest which, in the end, makes more sense as there is no making of footage in it. This is pretty much the events of the film boiled down to a run time of 7 minutes and 6 seconds (I actually liked this version better.) Amazingly, it still managed to perfectly showcase just how bad Riki Takeuchi’s performance is - it seems the lousiness of his performance cannot be restrained, even by a reduced running time. To be honest, without context, this extra is pretty pointless!

The final featurette is titled BRII: The Gala and the Orchestra (17:56) and details the movie’s premiere. An orchestra plays some of the classical pieces from the movie and then the director and cast speak about the production, all the time being watched over by a huge photo of Kinji. Partway through, when Kenta proclaims "I want to dedicate this film to him," I couldn’t help but wonder if the photo was going to burst into flames and a ghostly voice cry out a tortured "NO!!!"

Incidentally, this featurette also shows briefly what happened after the movie… Oddly it was applause and not, as I expected, an angry audience pelting the director and cast with rocks.

Rounding things off, we have brief biographies for Kinji Fukasaku and Takeshi Kitano. The Theatrical Trailer is included, presented in Non-Anamorphic Widescreen with Chinese subs. There are additional trailers for the original Battle Royale and a really ropey looking film called Ghost System. The former has only Chinese subs and the latter Chinese and English subs burnt into the print. There is also a Photo Gallery included with a rather stingy 10 photos.

Technically there’s little that can be faulted on this disc. The picture is very good, the sound is excellent, and the extras, that are here, are OK. Bonus points have to go to Universe for including English subs on most of the extras, as usually this is not the case with HK disks. For fans of the film (or the curious) this will make a decent purchase.

FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS
OVERALL

Review copyright © Ian Stanley, 2004.

DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.

PC games reviewed by the editor are on: