Monday, February 9, 2015

Battle Royale II (2003)



Number Rolled: 80
Movie Name/Year: Battle Royale II (2003)
Genre: Action
Length: 133 minutes
Rating: NR
Production Companies: Fukasaku-gumi, GAGA, Nippon Shuppan Hanbai (Nippan) K.K., Sega Corporation, TV Asahi, Toei Company, Tokyo FM Broadcasting Co., WoWow
Producers: Kenta Fukasaku, Kimio Kataoka, Hikaru Kawase, Masumi Okada
Director: Kenta Fukasaku, Kinji Fukasaku
Writer: Kenta Fukasaku, Norio Kida, Koushun Takami
Actors: Tatsuya Fujiwara, Ai Maeda, Shugo Oshinari, Ayana Sakai, Haruka Suenaga, Yuma Ishigaki, Miyuki Kanbe, Masaya Kikawada, Yoko Maki, Yuki Ito, Natsuki Kato, Aki Maeda, Riki Takeuchi, Takeshi Kitano, Masahiko Tsugawa

Shuya Nanahara may have escaped the games, but it certainly wasn’t unscathed. As a result, his anger has led him to start a war between the children and the adults. He’s a known terrorist now, responsible for explosive crimes. Meanwhile, Shiori Kitano believes she knows who Shuya really is. Her anger leads her to step in to the second Battle Royale in order to take him down.

Battle Royale II is a little older than the majority of the movies I work with, but I had to add it to the list anyway. The first movie in the series amazed me and that led me to voluntarily break my “rules.” Unfortunately, it wasn’t really worth it.

The plot seemed like it had a lot of potential, in theory. In practice, I was pretty surprised.

Although the movie started out basically the same and had a similar amount of gore, that was really all it had to do with the first movie.

The plot was jumpy, difficult to see as a cohesive story. On top of that, the main character kept changing between Shuya, Shiori and Takuma, not fluidly either. That made it extremely difficult to muster up any emotion for any of the characters at all. In fact, since all the characters reacted the exact same way to every stimulus, they were all kind of interchangeable.

Add to that the ridiculous acting of the main villain and it’s almost difficult to watch. The only reason the score wasn’t lower is because there were a few scenes that spoke to me.

Battle Royale II needed to be about an hour shorter with a lot more substance.

Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score – 30%
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score – 29%

Netflix’s Prediction for Me – 3.8/5
Trust-the-Dice Score1.5/5

The Random Rating: R

Movie Trailer:

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