Battle Royale is a fairly interesting concept: take around forty school kids, but them on an island with nothing but some expensive collars, a few weapons and you have a great potential for disaster.
This is certainly true of the first movie, the main focus being on how the characters were going to survive what their former class mates were planning to do with their weapons. Some were trying to get off the island, some were trying to save their own skin by killing everyone else and some were just there for the ride.
Now we have the second installment, which was shown on Film4 recently, so that's why I'm going to review it, also since this is the first review that I have done, it will be a fairly interesting film to review.
Ahem,
The film starts off dramatically enough, by seeing a group of buildings which seems suspiciously similar to the twin towers being blown up through an orange filter. We then learn that the survivors of the first Battle Royale have formed a terrorist group called the 'Wild Seven' and have declared war on all adults.
You may be thinking that this is a fairly redundant declaration of war, seeing as most of them will be adults in a few years, but anyway.
The premise that the first film sets up is here but there is some issue as to why. Instead of sending the children to kill each other, they have to kill the Wild Seven, they still have the collars although it seems fairly pointless, when they could just send in a squad or two of properly trained soldiers, rather than a group of sexually repressed teenagers, which they actually end up doing when the plan goes tits up, so it seems quite pointless.
I suppose that it makes for a more interesting battle when the combatants are all below the age of twenty-one and are still innocent (to some degree anyway), and the action throughout the film is suitably brutal and will make you empathize somewhat with the children, especially if you are in that age group. Apart from that though, if the government really wanted to get rid of the Wild Seven, then why not send men rather than children. Never has the phrase "Never send a child to do a man's job" been more apparent and relevant.
Speaking of apparent, the terrorists have access to all sorts of guns, rocket launchers and trip mines, where they get these from is never explained, as most terrorist groups consist entirely of adults, if they don't fight them then they are going against their own word. Although the weapons that they have are suitably effective, even if they do use an AK-47 as a sniper rifle, this is apparently something that the Hurt Locker tried to pick up on and failed to make it work either.
The main characters are quite typical, so typical that they remind me of the first film. There's the one main character who is angry at the teacher, whose friend gets killed in the classroom, and who has a love interest sub-plot that will be brought together in the end. Although despite the fairly generic character types, I do prefer the Japanese method of character development to the Western Style. The western style being not giving them a clear cut personality and make things difficult to understand for the viewer, whereas the Japanese style gives you some quite basic personalities and motivations, centralizing the story around the characters and the situation that they are in rather than vice versa which is what most western movies tend to do.
One of the main characters is the 'Teacher', this is another recurring theme from the first film, not telling us the name of the guy who is orchestrating the entire thing. Thankfully, the teacher is not the same as the previous guy, the guy that they have now is probably just a bit more obviously psychotic, whereas the previous teacher was more childish in his actions and was somewhat more unsettling than this guy. The current teacher is wearing a collar as well, although this is never fully explained. It shows that he isn't a willing participant either, but why he is actually wearing it isn't clear.
There are a few questions that are brought up and never answered, there is the whole business with the teacher, how the terrorists actually blew up the two towers, where the rest of the wild seven came from because I assume that there were only seven to begin with, but the second film is three years after the first event and even though there are small children running about there are teenagers and young adults there and this is another thing that is never explained either.
However, despite the previous six paragraphs of moaning, the film is still pretty good. The action is visceral, the characters are good, the acting is above standard, and there will always be some sort of weird appeal to watching a small girl try to run away from a collar that is about to explode that is attached to her neck.
I also like how you can actually care about the characters, because they are quite close to my own age group and I can imagine what I would do in that situation.
There are to ways of rating this and advising people whether to go and buy it or see it online or wherever you can find it.
If you want to see a bunch of kids shoot at each other with some real old school brutal action, and if you can overlook the slapdash reality of the situation then go for it.
If you want to see what happens next because you have only seen the first one and thought it was great, you may find it good, but if your favorite part of Battle Royale was the premise, then you might want to give this one a miss.
Well, that's my first review, I hope that you liked it and I'll see what I can review in the future that would be of some interest.
This is certainly true of the first movie, the main focus being on how the characters were going to survive what their former class mates were planning to do with their weapons. Some were trying to get off the island, some were trying to save their own skin by killing everyone else and some were just there for the ride.
Now we have the second installment, which was shown on Film4 recently, so that's why I'm going to review it, also since this is the first review that I have done, it will be a fairly interesting film to review.
Ahem,
The film starts off dramatically enough, by seeing a group of buildings which seems suspiciously similar to the twin towers being blown up through an orange filter. We then learn that the survivors of the first Battle Royale have formed a terrorist group called the 'Wild Seven' and have declared war on all adults.
You may be thinking that this is a fairly redundant declaration of war, seeing as most of them will be adults in a few years, but anyway.
The premise that the first film sets up is here but there is some issue as to why. Instead of sending the children to kill each other, they have to kill the Wild Seven, they still have the collars although it seems fairly pointless, when they could just send in a squad or two of properly trained soldiers, rather than a group of sexually repressed teenagers, which they actually end up doing when the plan goes tits up, so it seems quite pointless.
I suppose that it makes for a more interesting battle when the combatants are all below the age of twenty-one and are still innocent (to some degree anyway), and the action throughout the film is suitably brutal and will make you empathize somewhat with the children, especially if you are in that age group. Apart from that though, if the government really wanted to get rid of the Wild Seven, then why not send men rather than children. Never has the phrase "Never send a child to do a man's job" been more apparent and relevant.
Speaking of apparent, the terrorists have access to all sorts of guns, rocket launchers and trip mines, where they get these from is never explained, as most terrorist groups consist entirely of adults, if they don't fight them then they are going against their own word. Although the weapons that they have are suitably effective, even if they do use an AK-47 as a sniper rifle, this is apparently something that the Hurt Locker tried to pick up on and failed to make it work either.
The main characters are quite typical, so typical that they remind me of the first film. There's the one main character who is angry at the teacher, whose friend gets killed in the classroom, and who has a love interest sub-plot that will be brought together in the end. Although despite the fairly generic character types, I do prefer the Japanese method of character development to the Western Style. The western style being not giving them a clear cut personality and make things difficult to understand for the viewer, whereas the Japanese style gives you some quite basic personalities and motivations, centralizing the story around the characters and the situation that they are in rather than vice versa which is what most western movies tend to do.
One of the main characters is the 'Teacher', this is another recurring theme from the first film, not telling us the name of the guy who is orchestrating the entire thing. Thankfully, the teacher is not the same as the previous guy, the guy that they have now is probably just a bit more obviously psychotic, whereas the previous teacher was more childish in his actions and was somewhat more unsettling than this guy. The current teacher is wearing a collar as well, although this is never fully explained. It shows that he isn't a willing participant either, but why he is actually wearing it isn't clear.
There are a few questions that are brought up and never answered, there is the whole business with the teacher, how the terrorists actually blew up the two towers, where the rest of the wild seven came from because I assume that there were only seven to begin with, but the second film is three years after the first event and even though there are small children running about there are teenagers and young adults there and this is another thing that is never explained either.
However, despite the previous six paragraphs of moaning, the film is still pretty good. The action is visceral, the characters are good, the acting is above standard, and there will always be some sort of weird appeal to watching a small girl try to run away from a collar that is about to explode that is attached to her neck.
I also like how you can actually care about the characters, because they are quite close to my own age group and I can imagine what I would do in that situation.
There are to ways of rating this and advising people whether to go and buy it or see it online or wherever you can find it.
If you want to see a bunch of kids shoot at each other with some real old school brutal action, and if you can overlook the slapdash reality of the situation then go for it.
If you want to see what happens next because you have only seen the first one and thought it was great, you may find it good, but if your favorite part of Battle Royale was the premise, then you might want to give this one a miss.
Well, that's my first review, I hope that you liked it and I'll see what I can review in the future that would be of some interest.
