MonsterHunter

Did I hate this movie? Not really. Did I love it? Can’t say that I did. Well, did I at least have the slightest idea what was going on in it? Of course I didn’t! Oh, I understood that the first Battle Royale was a big hit and that a sequel was mandatory, but while they attempted to replicate a portion of the first movie, they also tried to expand things and waded into all sorts political muckety-muck that if I understood what point they were trying to make, I would probably be horribly offended as a real American. Luckily, as a real American, I can appreciate a person’s right to express their idiotic views so long as they’re wrapped up in lots of explosions, violent deaths, and gun battles. I’m much more interested in having a movie kick me in the ass than I am in being an ideologue.

Those of you new to this Battle Royale stuff need to check out the first one. Not because it’s necessary to understand or enjoy the second (heck, I saw the first one and I still didn’t know what was happening in this one), but because it’s a whole lot better, or at least, it’s more focused. Plus, in the first one you get lots of Beat Takeshi, while we’re relegated to about ninety seconds of Beat in cameo-flashback mode here.

See, if you had already watched the first one, you’d know how important lots of Beat time is. Sure, it probably isn’t fair to blame this movie for its Beatless ways, what with Beat not surviving the original film and they do try to replace him with a guy sort of like him (but his name is Riki, so you already have a good idea of how that goes), but there’s no denying that the best moment in the movie is when Beat’s daughter flashes back to when her dad forgot her birthday and she called him an idiot.

I had a sneaking suspicion that somehow this movie would end up being some anti-American diatribe when it started by showing a pair really tall buildings collapsing. It turns out to be the act of a band of terrorists lead by Shuya Nanahara. Shuya survived the first Battle Royale game and used that victory as a launching pad for his new career as violent psychopath who has declared war on all adults. Let’s see, if he’s about sixteen or seventeen years old, he’s going to have to finish his war within a few years or he’s going to seem about as silly as a rock band like Arrowsmith going out on tour, even though they’re in their eighties.

So what is it that’s put a burr under this kid’s saddle? I think he’s still a bit miffed by his whole Battle Royale experience. Let’s rehash the Battle Royale concept so that we’re all up to speed on the nonsense that follows. The BR Act was enacted by the Japanese government to deal with all their bratty kids back at the turn of the century. It created the ultimate reality show by taking one ninth grade class, putting explosive devices on their necks, dumping them on an island, arming them, and telling them that the only way the game ended is when everyone is dead except one of them. They had some built in safeguards to make sure that the kids didn’t fink out and refuse to play, namely that everyone’s collars would explode after a certain time no matter what.

With Shuya on the loose with a World Trade Center-sized chip on his shoulder, the Japanese government has no option but to call in their most potent secret weapon - another ninth grade class! When we meet our gang of malcontent teens, they’re on their way home from a hard fought rugby game and everyone is on the school bus signing the ball like it’s a yearbook or something. How many times do you think we’re going to have see that dang rugby ball in the movie whenever someone buys it?

Later on they wake up and discover that they all have these collars on and that they’re at some secret military base. They’ve been selected to participate in the latest Battle Royale game! At this point, things play out pretty much like they did in the first movie. The kids are screaming and don’t want to play and a few of them have to be killed to demonstrate to everyone else that this is the real deal as well as show off the destructive power of the collars once they’re detonated.

They introduce Beat’s replacement (the evil teacher character) Riki at this point and it made me long for Beat’s unconventional (read: ugly) looks and unflattering track suits, as well as his obsession with eating cookies. Riki has this slightly Wayne Newtonian look about him with his fancy black hair and his wardrobe choice of wearing a black trench coat didn’t give him the bad guy authority look so much as the out-of-style pimp look. He also was prone to giving speeches about how there are only two sides in life: the winners and the losers and which one are you on? I’m guessing that he must have been this ninth grade’s P.E. teacher. He also popped amphetamines instead of cookies.

The similarities to the first movie end at this point, because the kids in this one have a different mission. Instead of killing one another, they are charged with storming the island stronghold of Shuya and wiping him and his cell of terrorists out! Uh, does this strike anyone as a gimmick for gimmick’s sake? What reason is there to do this? Doesn’t Japan have a Delta Force or something? Why would they think that a bunch of scared kids could take out a group of terrorists with the ability to bring down multiple skyscrapers simultaneously? And can anyone tell me what any of this has to do with Riki’s diatribe where he lists all these countries that America has bombed in the last couple of decades? Each and every one of those countries had it coming, needed liberating, or harbored commies. Hey Riki! Me and my grandpa have two words for you: Pearl Harbor. Why don’t you go crying to the Greatest Generation and see how far you get, Pinko!

I’m telling you, the only reason I stuck through this pud’s trashy cheap shots was because I knew we were only moments away from about ninety straight minutes of punk kids dying horribly graphic deaths. And once our forty or so student/special forces team hits their rubber rafts and go speeding toward’s Shuya’s island hideout, the kids start dropping like flies. They come under fire before they even hit the beaches and several of them don’t even make it to shore. Adding to the carnage is the newest twist in the Battle Royale game that each boy is paired with a girl and when one or the other dies, the other one’s collars blow or when they are more than fifty meters apart, both collars go off. This results in lots of scenes of kids running around grabbing their neck while their collar beeps and turns red before there’s an explosion and a satisfying spray of blood.

As expected, Shuya seems pretty sympathetic to these kids, especially once he deploys his EMP weapon that disables the collars. You don’t have to actually sit through this movie to know that the new band of ninth graders will join up with the old ninth graders against the adults that are now en route to the island. After a mysterious nation launches a couple of missiles at the island (I don’t know who it was for sure, but I’m guessing its initials were U.S.A.), the Japanese prime minister declares that they need to send their own troops in there to clean up the mess themselves. This angers Riki for some reason, further pointing this film series’ stupidity of having disgruntled high school teachers in charge of sensitive military operations.

The rest of the movie is then simply a battle between the kids and the adults, which sounds good on paper, but since I had no idea who any of these kids were, it all had very little impact on me. I knew who Shuya was. And there was a kid with blonde hair. And there was Beat’s daughter. And then there was about fifteen other twerps who eventually bought the farm that I couldn’t even tell you if they were in the movie at the start or not. It was all a very noisy and numbing experience at the end and since everyone involved were now just members of various armies, it wasn’t terribly compelling.

As silly as the original’s premise was, it was able to keep you interested because of the interactions of the kids. Groups would work together to survive, but each of them knew eventually they would have to turn on one another if they wanted to live. You were also able to see the various reactions the kids had to their predicament. Some reveled in the violence, some loathed it, some rejected it, and some just did what they had to. You were able to spend enough with them and see enough individuality in some of them that when the screen updated us with the dead kid’s name and number it was possible that it actually meant something. They keep that bit in this movie as well, updating us on who is dead and how many are left, but there isn’t game of survival being played anymore and you don’t know any of these people, so who cares?

Kenta Fukasaku took over the directing duties for his father Kenji who died during filming, and the movie looks and sounds quite good. The problem is the age old one of style over substance and while the first one suffered from that as well, this one is hurt by it more substantially because the story is just not very well thought out. All of this mush headed babble about kids vs. adults mixed in with the anti-American crap and post-September 11 stuff never added up to much and certainly didn’t explain what in the world the Japanese were doing sending a bunch of high school kids off to kill terrorists on an island.

This was the sort of movie where after all this blah blah about war and peace and evil countries and winners and losers, the teacher shows up on the island dressed in his rugby outfit carrying that rugby ball and he says he wishes that his students had asked him to play with them and then he tells them to get out and then he dives over to somewhere and everything starts blowing up. Funny? Yes. Memorable? You bet. Was I finally able to make heads or tails over what was happening? Of course not! And the epilogue that took place three months later? In a class all by itself. (Except for the very last scene of the epilogue which they ripped off of the first Terminator movie.) An ill-conceived sequel riding the coattails of a predecessor that was overrated to begin with.

© 2008 MonsterHunter