Batoru rowaiaru II: Chinkonka (Battle Royale II) (2003)

30% of critics liked it
(10 reviews)
36% of users liked it
(28,129 ratings)

Three years after the events in "Battle Royale," Shuya Nanahara (Tatsuya Fujiwara)is a well-known terrorist bent on bringing down the government. In response, they order the creation of the "Battle Royale 2" program, and send a class of junior-high students to catch and kill him.

Rating, Runtime: Unrated, 2 hr. 12 min.
Directed By: Kenta Fukasaku, Kinji Fukasaku
Genres: Drama, Action & Adventure, Art House & International

On DVD: May 4, 2004

Critic Reviews

John Beifuss, Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)
It's meant to be provocative, but it's muddled and nonsensical, with none of the liveliness or cleverness of its predecessor.
Rob Gonsalves, eFilmCritic.com
If the original film flirted with controversy, the sequel has sex with it on the first date.
Nick Schager, Lessons of Darkness
A film in which the heroes are al Qaeda surrogates.
Joe Utichi, FilmFocus
An effort in excess. To be avoided at all costs.
Dave Alexander, Rue Morgue Magazine
Requiem is stupid to the point of aggravation and long enough to qualify as torture under the Geneva Convention.
Daniel Wible, Film Threat
While falling short of the pure impact of the original, is another provocative, audacious bit of filmmaking in its own right.

Read all 6 critic reviews

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Fresh (60% or more critics rated the movie positively)

Rotten (59% or fewer critics rated the movie positively)

Featured Audience Ratings

Lewis C

"Imagine the stirring sight of 42 youthful, passionate deaths!" How do you squander all the good things the original Battle Royale had going for it? By replacing the brutality and intimacy of it with long, monotonous firefights and empty political rhetoric. That's what… More
"Imagine the stirring sight of 42 youthful, passionate deaths!" How do you squander all the good things the original Battle Royale had going for it? By replacing the brutality and intimacy of it with long, monotonous firefights and empty political rhetoric. That's what Battle Royale II: Requiem does, and as a result, it's a shell of the first movie. I can understand the desire to move the overall story forward and not make the sequel a mere retread of the original, but this wasn't the way to do it. The new characters are almost universally unmemorable, compared to the several in the first movie that stuck in my mind after the very first viewing. The plot attempts to interject "big ideas" into the narrative, but instead makes the whole film tiresome, incoherent, and almost impossible to maintain interest in. The pacing is terrible, with long stretches where nothing happens, followed by long stretches where faceless soldiers endlessly fire across a room at characters you don't care about. In short, Battle Royale II can (and should) be skipped. It's not even worth seeing to find out the fates of the surviving characters from the first movie. Just watch Battle Royale again and pretend that's the end of it all.
Sophie B

Started off well but the main character with blonde hair was incredibly annoying with his constant bulging eyes and shaking in anger. It was far too long, far too many SFX shots and so many false endings. Half way through it could have finished. It was too much of a coincidence that… More
Started off well but the main character with blonde hair was incredibly annoying with his constant bulging eyes and shaking in anger. It was far too long, far too many SFX shots and so many false endings. Half way through it could have finished. It was too much of a coincidence that the two men survived at the end and just simply a total mash up of the original. The bigger budget certainly has not worked to its advantage.
Ariuza k

Really bad movie that just never lived up to what the first did, it just doesn't have any suspense or trilling scenes of violence or action. The first movie is my second favorite and I have seen it like a million times now there a second and I have only seen this 1 and half times… More
Really bad movie that just never lived up to what the first did, it just doesn't have any suspense or trilling scenes of violence or action. The first movie is my second favorite and I have seen it like a million times now there a second and I have only seen this 1 and half times couldn't get throw it the second time. So after the failed of the first movie or the Battle Royale Program the two reaming survivors start a terrorist group called the wild seven that are responsible for destroying hundreds of building and killing lots of political, and civilians. So the game is different these kids have been giving 3 days to kill all of the wild seven and if your partner dies so do you. The ending wasn't really that shocking unlike the first just really average like the film so really everything is bad besides some entertaining action scenes. So if you love the first I wouldn't say see this.
Keiko A

I loved Battle Royale it is truly one of my top ten, it was a really fine movie which almost deserves the title classic in my book. Other people also seemed to like it, judging from the great amount of money it made and all the positive comments here on rotten tomatoes. Unfortunately… More
I loved Battle Royale it is truly one of my top ten, it was a really fine movie which almost deserves the title classic in my book. Other people also seemed to like it, judging from the great amount of money it made and all the positive comments here on rotten tomatoes. Unfortunately whenever a movie does really well and there is an opening for a sequel in the end of it, a sequel will sooner or later come along. And that sequel will almost always be much worse than the first film. That's the case for Battle Royale 2. I am not going to wast much time writing this so. The story is actually pretty clever, so I won't spoil it for you but from there it's all downhill. This movie takes all the poetic style of the first one and makes it longer, slower and more pretentious. Sounds good? Well, however it may sound to you, it's NOT good. Battle Royale 2 has serious problems with pacing and the pace here is sometimes near nonexistent. It also suffers from being incredibly hard to follow since the story at times makes very little sense. With average to poor acting and very dull CGI Battle royal 2 proves to be the worst sequal in history. (Well one of them) If you really, really loved the first outing than there just might be something in it for you, otherwise you won't want to touch this with a ten foot pole. Keikos score 21-100
A.D. V

The first was no masterpiece but at least it was an entertaining thriller. The sequel however is a sloppy, misguided failure thanks to hammy, anime-style acting, a lack of plot or point and just plain dumb plot holes.
El Hombre I

What in the shit happened here? When veteran director Kinji Fukasaku died during the making of Requiem, his son Kenta took up the reins. Does it ever show. One can't help but compare the film to its' predecessor which focused on the personal dynamics of the students… More
What in the shit happened here? When veteran director Kinji Fukasaku died during the making of Requiem, his son Kenta took up the reins. Does it ever show. One can't help but compare the film to its' predecessor which focused on the personal dynamics of the students and left the audience to draw their own conclusions as to what the film had to say. The dark humor and social commentary in the first film (which can still be debated) are replaced by highly cartoonish action and even sillier interaction. Also, we have Beat Takeshi's "wearied school-teacher" character replaced by Riki Takeuchi, who looks as if he's stepped off a tour bus with rap group Public Enemy. His acting is just too over-the-top and without any emotional depth to be taken seriously. His scenes would be perfect in director Takashi Miike's tongue-in-cheek action flicks but in this film, it's a waste of credibility. Some points are awarded to the editing and the rhythm of the film. Camerawork is nice and you can say that too about the sound design. I'm sure this looked really good on paper, but without a strong director at the helm, you end up with results like this. Battle Royale With Cheese. <a href="http://s273.photobucket.com/albums/jj203/goji9000/?action=view¤t=battleroyale2.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/jj203/goji9000/battleroyale2.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>
Anthony L

Unfortunately the sequel is very disappointing. Its messy, tired and complicated. The original was so good, its should have been left at that.
Justin Y

Kinji Fukasaku, the man that brought the great Battle Royale to life, sadly ends his career with a sequel worth forgetting.As much as I want to say that this sequel is different from its predecessor, watching Battle Royale will help setup… More
Kinji Fukasaku, the man that brought the great Battle Royale to life, sadly ends his career with a sequel worth forgetting.As much as I want to say that this sequel is different from its predecessor, watching Battle Royale will help setup this film because there are few explanations to build up what is happening.The story is a mess, except for the beginning, which actually feels like its on the right track. The pacing of the first 50 minutes is fast. It is actually too fast. I don't want to spoil anything, but before this film even reaches 30 minutes, 20+ of the 42 students cease to exist.The film also finds a way to drag itself out to a few minutes past 2 hours. But didn't nearly half the students die by the first half an hour mark? That is correct. What happens at around 1 hour is a change in the story, which makes keeping track of students useless. Yet the film does it anyway. The story becomes boring and the character buildup is lame.The action is a plenty, since nothing else is really going on. There is a lot of blood, explosions, and shootings. The camerawork, on the other hand, is decent at best. There are times where there is just too much shaking going on.The acting is decent enough, although the lack of character depth doesn't help. Riki Takeuchi is the most eccentric out of everybody.Sorry to say, but this is a movie to pass up. Fans of the first Battle Royale should just watch it again.
_kelly .

7-31-08 Added 1 star because of top production value and because I like the new "welcome to BR/take your packs" scene. The story and premise still suck, and this is full of too many missed opportunities for or awkward inclusion of minute, but important, references to the… More
7-31-08 Added 1 star because of top production value and because I like the new "welcome to BR/take your packs" scene. The story and premise still suck, and this is full of too many missed opportunities for or awkward inclusion of minute, but important, references to the first movie. ---- What can I say other than "this sucks because it is completely without direction and a resounding theme (or even just a decent one) but instead is just a restaging of many famous battle scenes, except with teenaged kids in stupid uniforms (they have ORANGE in them) instead of Nazis, Navy Seals, Green Berets, or typical adult army grunts". Here the "kids' view vs. the grownups' view" is downplayed due to an emphasis on a political commentary on the United States as a nation that is obsessed with "bombing terrorists" and has the long list of nations bombed to prove it (That's what the lesson is at the beginning, not stuff about BR and the internal stresses in Japanese society causing the BR Act, but which countries the US has bombed in the last fifty years (to which I say, look at everyone else's records too; fifty years is a long time). But I guess it is saying something about the outgoing Bushie that even as early as 2003, foreign genre films were already laced with an anti-Bush backbone. Another large statement is trying to be made about "terrorists", how the only difference between "revolutionary" and "terrorist" is the outcome of the declared war. A true thing, but not communicated properly; they should have read Alan Moore's "V for Vendetta" granted the movie version wasn't out yet but that central idea and concise execution has existed for hundreds of years. Just take a better model from the political war genre and plug in your characters and instantly this could have been a great B version of 'City of God'. Get the first movie in a high definition version; don't waste time on this misstep of a sequel.
Luke B

Over the top? Deffinately. Heavy handed? Certainly. Dissapointing? Pretty much. Entertaining? Oh yeah. Okay so following up the cult classic in your father's shadow is bound to be hard and yes the film lacks any form of subtlety in getting its message across. It is though a wild… More
Over the top? Deffinately. Heavy handed? Certainly. Dissapointing? Pretty much. Entertaining? Oh yeah. Okay so following up the cult classic in your father's shadow is bound to be hard and yes the film lacks any form of subtlety in getting its message across. It is though a wild ride with some fantastic action set pieces in and characters you can genuinely feel for. Not much sense is made and it is overlong but it still had me entranced.
Dr Blood

While there's still lots of gory fun including exploding heads, decapitations, gunshot wounds, eviscerations and other nastiness, "Battle Royale II: Requiem" just wasn't as good as the original. The main reason is that after all the excitement of the first half an… More
While there's still lots of gory fun including exploding heads, decapitations, gunshot wounds, eviscerations and other nastiness, "Battle Royale II: Requiem" just wasn't as good as the original. The main reason is that after all the excitement of the first half an hour or so it all gets very talky with huge boring sermons about how bad war is.
Drew S

Battle Royale 2 is a dull, unapologetic mess. It completely excises everything that made the first movie so strong: weird poeticism in the face of horror, great characters that you actually sympathized with, and a twisted plot that delivered its message in subtle ways. Instead, it… More
Battle Royale 2 is a dull, unapologetic mess. It completely excises everything that made the first movie so strong: weird poeticism in the face of horror, great characters that you actually sympathized with, and a twisted plot that delivered its message in subtle ways. Instead, it opts for gory deaths, generic action scenes and some of the most ham-fisted political diatribes EVER committed to celluloid. Sure, I guess it's not really fair to lambast this movie too much. Kenta Fukasaku was picking up the slack where his father Kinji left off after he died from stomach cancer, so he was put in a difficult position. Regardless, there's no excuse for the complete lack of quality in this film. In its new objective - farm a class of students to hunt the reclusive terrorist Shuya - it sets the stage to be nothing but a lousy action movie, so he's working with a flawed premise already. He only manages to make it worse. The biggest problem, as I see it, is that we don't get to know the class that's participating in the BR at all. We get introduced to Takuma Aoi, played absolutely horribly by Shugo Oshinari, who can do nothing but look pissed off and bug out his eyeballs. Worst main character ever. We also meet Kitano's daughter, who made a brief appearance in the first film and is probably the only interesting character in the lot. And that's it. A couple of other kids get vague defining traits (diabetes, weird hair) but that's absolutely the last we hear from them. The movie just doesn't care about them. For one thing, two of the boats blow up before they even get to the island, knocking off 12 characters right off the bat. What the fuck? 30% of the class is gone and we do not even see their faces. I mean, the first Battle Royale had its share of throwaway characters, but by and large it did an excellent job personifying them in the short time it had. Killing 12 characters like that is laziness. They continue to drop like flies throughout the movie, nothing but nameless action heroes getting gunned down by the terrorists. BUT WE DON'T CARE. BIG PROBLEM. It totally screws the movie. Can I also say how illogically it's all written? The aim of this Battle Royale is to use these 40 middle school students to kill Shuya Nanahara...but they're making it really hard for them. The necklaces are back, but now they're programmed to go off if your partner dies. Why? That's a waste of manpower. It only exists to expediate the movie and trim the useless characters. Similarly, why would you give them guns without ammunition and force them to find it? And why would you install danger zones on the island where they get blown up? How did they even get the danger zones there in the first place? The movie so blatantly illogical that it's just astonishing. Then again, it doesn't really matter, because after the first hour the BR element is dropped completely. The remaining 10 or 12 kids somehow manage to side with Shuya, and the movie's true agenda becomes clear. It's political commentary! Awesome! The statements are so broad, so poorly-telegraphed, and so blatantly self-righteous that we can't help but be appalled at them. I'm certainly a liberal, don't get me wrong, but the agenda of this movie even turned my stomach. The beauty of the first Battle Royale is that it never took itself too seriously, even when it was communicating a message. I view it as a black comedy of sorts. BR2 is so po-faced and serious that it's painful. Oh yeah, and did I mention that the last hour is completely boring? They remove the necklaces magically, so there's no more deaths. Only two among the kids after that span of time. It's no fun if they beat the system. Then again, considering everyone in the movie is a faceless grunt, I guess it doesn't really matter. I've ranted far too much about a movie that is irredeemably awful. Screw it. See this only if you absolutely have to, for curiosity's sake; it is not worth your time either way.
Kylie B

So dissapointing compared with the brilliance of the first.
Tsubaki S

Not only not as good as the first, but a very bad film of it's own and a total waste of time. Fails as both an action film and as a social commentary of sorts about war. It seems to have been crafted by some Mtv marketing group, looking to add "hip" looking actors to… More
Not only not as good as the first, but a very bad film of it's own and a total waste of time. Fails as both an action film and as a social commentary of sorts about war. It seems to have been crafted by some Mtv marketing group, looking to add "hip" looking actors to attract kids. Kenta Fukasaku needs to work a lot if he wants to get out of his father's shadow.
xGary X

Or "How to take a nice idea and wring every drop of wit and subtlety out of it." I felt like I was watching a cheap video game; the scene inter-cut with children in Iraq is laughable. Pretentious and stupid.
Steve K

An interesting experience. Possibly the most directly anti-American/anti-Western foreign policy film I've ever seen.
Donnie D

If you haven't seen the first Battle Royale or are planning to watch it, do not read this as it has spoilers and gives away who lives from the first movie. I highly praised the first Battle Royale for having a deep meaning behind all the violence, which is what was missing in… More
If you haven't seen the first Battle Royale or are planning to watch it, do not read this as it has spoilers and gives away who lives from the first movie. I highly praised the first Battle Royale for having a deep meaning behind all the violence, which is what was missing in this sequel. If you hated or love the first Battle Royale, you will not find much redeemable quality in this movie. Battle Royale 2 is set three years after the failure of the first Battle Royale program and this time instead of killing each other. The new program forces the new group of students to kill a new terrorist group consisting of survivors of previous BR Program who trying to overtake the government. Now the terrorist group, led by Nanahara who survived from the first filmed, has declared war against adults. Which is really stupid, Nanahara was a ninth grader in the first movie and since this takes place three years later means he's not that far from becoming an adult himself defeating the whole purpose of his organization if he's an adult. Plus, blowing up buildings and killing many of innocence people won't make government listen to your demands; it'll make just make the people angrier and not care when Nanahara terrorist group get killed. Since I'm picking the character Nanahara, I should also state I find it unbelievable he went from a vulnerable and strong will young adult to Asian Rambo since it defeat his entire character purpose from the first movie and become nothing alike. Notice that I'm nitpicking just one certain aspect of the movie so far, you could only imagine how I feel about the movie as a whole. As a whole, the movie story is missing what made the first Battle Royale such a masterpiece. First, the sequel actually has an even higher body count and its message becomes loss in all it violence. I actually didn't care when the children in the movie die since I knew little to nothing about them. I should also add that a majority of the kids in the BR 2 Program die in the first half of the movie and very quickly. Second, it message becomes loss in all the violence and uneven story which has no idea what it's trying to be. It's so poorly put together as I find it really hard for our main character to care about another character death have an impact on him when we never see them in a scene together or get dialogue about their history. Three, it's very, very, loud. The movie was so loud in the action scenes that I actually had to lower the volume on my television just so it wouldn't break my eardrums. Four, what's the point of sending kids to a dangerous island filled with armed and skilled terrorist if the kids don't get any kind of training. Which brings up another flaw in the movie, why send people to kill these terrorists on the island if the government knows where there are and simply just bomb them saving millions (it'll feel like that in the climax, they just won't stop coming) of soldiers. Five, why set a very violent movie around Christmas time. It does nothing and adds nothing to the movie. I could keep going listing on things wrong with this sequel, but I know won't stop if I do continue. The cast is not bad, but they're not as interesting as the first movie. There are a few returning cast members; even Kitano himself returns. Though his talent and character serve little purpose for the movie, and there even less of him in the movie which I personally consider a flaw in the movie. The new groups of kids can't act; even the writers knew this which is why most of these kids die in explosions in large numbers. Then comes to my least favorite character of the movie, the evil teacher is over the top in his performance and comes out more like a cartoon than a menacing villain. On the topic on the cast, you could immediately tell who was going to die by the cast performances and who was going to live. As for the direction, there some great action scenes in the movie, but it's pointless when the movie doesn't know what's trying to be and lacks the emotion for us to care. If you hated the violence in the Battle Royale, you'll definitely hate this one even more as it's actually pointless. I was actually amazed by how much violence this movie had and it's served little purpose for the movie and becomes an unworthy sequel. Battle Royale 2 offers nothing of what made the first movie a masterpiece and has everything to make this an uneven mess. It tries something completely new and becomes alienated from the first movie with no meaning. Battle Royale 2 is by far one of the most disappointing sequels I've seen so far.
Chris B

While the first film, "Battle Royale" was wholly original and was a very unique and very well done film, the second outing gives us more of the violence but in such a way that it seems a simple rehashing of the first film. While the film is entertaining overall and packed… More
While the first film, "Battle Royale" was wholly original and was a very unique and very well done film, the second outing gives us more of the violence but in such a way that it seems a simple rehashing of the first film. While the film is entertaining overall and packed with social/political commentary, this time it is rather blatant and in your face opposed to the first film in which it is more subtitle. "Battle Royale II: Requiem" picks up three years after "Battle Royale" and features a new class of students recruited against their will to find and kill Shuya Nanahara who is living on a desolate island along with other rebels. Nanahara is the leader of the rebellion and lives with the countless deaths by his own hand and the government run by merciless and corrupt adults seeking his death. If you liked the first film you will probably be let down by this second feature but at the same time still entertained, give it a shot, but don't ask me about the rather strange and overly ridiculous fate of the characters.
August S

The story is as bad as the actors. Battle Royale two's greatest mistake is it's amateur cast and its goal to bring back the emotions from the first film. It's thrilless (<--- if ever there's a word.) and failed in filling those insane amount of plot holes… More
The story is as bad as the actors. Battle Royale two's greatest mistake is it's amateur cast and its goal to bring back the emotions from the first film. It's thrilless (<--- if ever there's a word.) and failed in filling those insane amount of plot holes that it sinks too fast, and too miserably.
Sylvester K

Another sequel rip-off