It's rare to find a sequel that's actually any good. In fact, the very words 'a good sequel' would strike many people as an oxymoron. (That was always a strange phrase to me -- an 'oxymoron.' OXY was that pimple-cream stuff, wasn't it? And a moron is an idiot, right? So I always imagined an 'oxymoron' as a nerdy-type dude staring at himself in front of the mirror with zit potion smeared all over his face. But I digress...)
The thing is, not including all of those old serial flicks from the thirties and forties, sequels really didn't get going as an economic and artistic (?) force until the seventies. In the Sixties, you had THE RETURN OF THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, true, but other than that, I can't think of another one. (Unless you count the sequel to Paul Newman's THE HUSTLER titled THE COLOR OF MONEY, but that didn't come out until the late eighties.) In the Seventies, sequels began to be made, but they were almost always follow-ups to respected, praiseworthy films. (With the exception of SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT II.) Three Best Picture winners -- THE GODFATHER, THE FRENCH CONNECTION and ROCKY all had sequels made within the Seventies. (Yes, ROCKY won Best Picture. Look it up. Honest.)
Once the eighties hit, all hell broke loose, with sequels to any movie that made even a little bit of money. (CANNONBALL RUN II, which I, um, kind of liked. REVENGE OF THE NERDS II. PORKY'S II: THE NEXT DAY. SHORT CIRCUIT II. POLICE ACADEMY II through, what, VII? Need I go on?) Nowadays, it's almost preordained that if a film rakes in the cash, there WILL be a continuation of the series, like it or not. (You just KNOW that people were CLAMORING for sequels to BRIDGET JONES DIARY, OCEAN'S ELEVEN, THE PRINCESS DIARIES, etc.)
Japan, too, makes its fair share of sequels, and BATTLE ROYAL II is one of them.
It continues the story begun in BATTLE ROYAL, which I wrote about a few days ago. (If you're interested, scroll down. If you're not interested, um, there's some pretty good stuff over at www.cnn.com. News and the like.) That particular film envisioned a near-future Japan where delinquent kids were shipped off to an isolated island to hunt, maim and kill one another, the winner being the only one left standing. (Then again, aren't all islands, by their very nature, 'isolated'? Anyway...) It was a savage, brutal, piercing and funny indictment of the Japanese educational system. In the end, two kids managed to survive, heading back into an uncertain world. There was a grim honesty here that was fresh and bracing.
BATTLE ROYAL II continues the story, as the male survivor of the first film creates his own terrorist organization centralized on a, you guessed it, isolated island; their cause is designed to further the destruction of all adults, not only the ones who forced him to kill and watch his friends being killed. The government sends their own band of teenagers as part of a 'Battle Royal II' game to kill the terrorist punks. Why not let the kids kill the kids?
This second story lacks the clever, visceral punch of the first film; it's almost a war film, with many battle scenes that are quite clearly modeled on SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. It's slower, and talkier, and may, well, bore more than a few viewers.
Having said that, I think this is, in many ways, a deeper film than the first one. The first film's tagline was: "Would you kill your best friend?" This one's may as well be: "Now that you've killed your best friend, how does that make you feel?"
Angry, this film answers, angry and ready to lash out at the world. Ready to condemn anyone and everyone over the age of eighteen.
The plot veers in a direction I never expected it to, concerning itself with terrorism both local and international. How are terrorists made? Why do they do what they do? Well, this film explores that concept as part of a larger investigation into how violence-as violence- messes people up, physically and psychologically. Most action flicks dispense deaths and violence like trick-or-treat candy. This one acknowledges that violence is painful and confusing and disruptive and chaotic. Characters from the first film have evolved from normal kids to savage terrorists; the government leader (and inept parent seen on the receiving end of an indifferent, disgusted phone call from his child) who killed himself at the end of the original has a teenage daughter that is trying to understand why her father was killed, and who did it, and why. The victims become terrorists, all in the name of world liberation. And they deal, emotionally and continuously, with the ramifications of their actions. They hurt and bleed and cry and wonder why. And plot to change the world.
It's kind of a kooky story, truth be told, and its politics and point of view is decidedly adoles --
cent -- and that's the point, and that's why it works. If I was fifteen years old, I would have been cheering the protagonists on. It's an adolescent revenge fantasy on the surface, filled with good kids who are striking back at their oppressors in the name of a larger goal, the liberation of mankind. A manga come to life. It is not a mature film because these kids are not mature; this is what violence has done to them, and now they are trying to use violence to achieve what they consider to be honorable, humanity-serving goals. It's messages and morality are somewhat simplistic, but hey -- if your audience is the younger generation, you can't make everything subtext. It doesn't hurt to be clear and obvious, sometimes.
Look, this is a violent, action-packed film, as the ads say. It's meant to titillate and entertain. But it does so with a reserved intelligence that is absent from most American films. It is very violent, yes, but the film doesn't shirk from that violence -- it pauses to examine the roots of that violence, its sources and its effects. It continues the spirit of the first film but it has a resonance and underlying morality that is an extension, not a retread, of the original.
Most sequels are the same story -- just bigger, longer, more. BATTLE ROYAL II fits that mold, but it's not afraid to be complex and contemplative. (In between the gunfire and spurting blood, of course. This is, after all, a 'Battle Royal' movie.) The filmmakers could easily have just trotted out a gory retread, but they have gone out on a limb and chosen a bold approach that acknowledges the central gimmick of the first film, incorporates it into this second chapter, and then tries to somehow merge within its narrative the seemingly disparate elements of present-day concerns regarding international terrorism with the universal teenage fears of growing-up and getting old.
A bizarre combination, yes, and not always successful -- but boy, both of the Battle Royal flicks use violence and satire in a combination unseen in western cinema. Stark and funny and scary and absurd, these films are. Kind of like adolescence.
