Battle Royale 2 - Comments after viewing some of it
Taken from KFC message board.
Lots of Spoilers in the article, but nothing really that bad. Anyway, read on your own risk :p
"I'll be posting this to AICN shortly. Just wanted to give my real friends at KFCC the heads up. Mega-fucking spoilers ahead. So don't say I didn't warn you.
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Hi Harry and fellow fans of Vic Morrow’s performance in Message From Space. Ohisashiburi, whatever the heck that means. Author of book TokyoScope here, back in the USA after a week in the city that will make any geek’s knees tremble with ecstasy. And when it gets nuked and becomes Neo-Tokyo, multiply knee-trembling by 10.
For some reason, whenever I go there, strange and wonderful things tend to happen. Not like I think it’s me. Tokyo is an eternal thought in mind of Godzilla; fueled by energy drinks, cigarettes, and girls in sailor suits. It supplies the all miracles by itself, like a chick wearing a white cowboy hat and red hot pants who offers you tissues at the train station exit.
Last time I went there, I wound up at Toho studios for a preview screening of Godzilla Vs. Mecha Godzilla. This time, I found myself at Toei studios where I got to walk around on the set of the new Power Rangers show Abaranger as a giant monster mashed miniature balsa wood building all around me. It was pretty cool, and I was tempted to start smashing them myself, just to prove it was all really happening and to see if I had any superpowers ala Spectreman.
And for a bonus, I somehow managed to sit in on a sound mixing session for BATTLE ROYALE 2 – REQUIEM. Had fate been less kind, perhaps I would have waltzed in while they were doing the opening or closing titles or the part where everyone sits around and talks about each other’s feelings like at the end of a really good XTC roll.
But no, the sound guys were working on the action-packed finale of the film, full of blood, thunder, and enough youth violence to ensure that BR2, just like BR1, will not be playing at your local multiplex anytime soon. It will, however, be opening in theaters across Japan on July 5th.
Most everything I’ve learned about the film so far as come from this great English-language BR2-watch site located at http://battleroyalefilm.net/sequel/news.html. If you want to know the basic plot outline, cast, and set-up I’d strongly advise going there first and getting your spoiler on before I get *my* spoiler later on below.
Everything else I’ve learned about BR2 comes from my Japanese friend, a fellow film journalist who visited the set a few months back. As you may, or may not, know the original director of the film, the incredibly great Kinji Fukasaku (Fight Without Honor, The Green Slime) died after completing only once scene. His young son Kenta, also the co-screenwriter of BR2 and the producer/screenwriter of BR1, since stepped into the director’s chair … for the first time. Since Kenta’s directorial skills are yet unproved, no small amount of trepidation and nervousness has accompanied this decision from both hardcore BR fans and even from a film studio whose most anticipated and expensive domestic film in years has been put into the hands of a total newbie. But that’s only half the story.
My buddy says that, in all honestly, the bulk of the film is actually being overseen by the Assistant Director and the second unit crew. The fact that this is sorta hush-hush is largely because honor and loyalty (can remember stuff like that?) is actually still a big deal in Japan. Battle Royale 2 is still being sold as a Kinji Fukasaku film, and he’s even featured on the poster in spite of the fact that Kenta gets the director’s credit, and the AD did most of the work. Go figure.
But it just so happens that this here AD is an action specialist who handled a large amount of bullets and blood on the first Battle Royale, which means this the sequel stands to be pretty rock ‘em sock ‘em.
Keep in mind that the 15-20 odd minutes I saw were still very rough and unfinished. It looked like everything was completed in the way of editing and continuity, but the sound was on-set only, not a note of music was heard, and there were more than a few instances where it was fairly obvious that some sort CGI was going to added later on.
Plus, unlike Elizabeth Taylor, I don’t have a photographic memory. Keep in mind that I was a million miles away from home, jet-lagged and hung-over, visiting my favorite film studio in the world, standing there in shock and awe with my mouth hanging open like a slack-jawed yokel. I didn’t takes notes or make a ferocious amount of mental notes. Maybe you have a full range of MegaMemory products. I don’t. But what I can say with some degree of confidence is that what I saw was very, very impressive. Imagine a mix of Saving Private Ryan and Blackhawk Down starring Japanese school kids armed with FAMAS assault rifles and AK-47s. You probably wouldn’t care too much about who was directing it. And for awhile, neither did I.
So here we go ….
The teen terrorist organization, The Wild 7, looking very Al Qaeda by way of Harajuku, are inside a ramshackle building on their island hideout. They are under siege from the new class of BR students, made up of delinquents, problem children, and truants, who have been given three days to hunt Wild 7 leader Shuya and his gang down.
There is a lot of gunplay and explosions going back and forth, and at least 60% of the footage I saw was made up of serious shoot shoot bang bang.
At least two members of the Wild 7 take hits and die hard, but not before giving classically BR-esque dying words of encouragement to Shuya. In the case of Natsuki Kato, who plays the Wild 7’s official adorable sniper, before she dies, she
goes kamizake and takes more than a few solider/students out with her.
Then maybe Shuya – maybe a dying member of the Wild 7 – starts to fiddle with a computer that sets off a self-destruct sequence of some kind. More intense gunplay ensues and if I remember Shuya, one of the few survivors of the core Wild 7 at this point, tries to make a break for it. Time for some MegaMemory implants, methinks.
Then the film cuts to a different location, a cave of some sort on the island where a group of grimy but still fresh faced camo-clad BR2 solider/students are standing around. It seems they’re busy with their own sure-to-be-fascinating subplot, and for some reason, they aren’t going after Shuya and company. Out the darkness emerges their sadistic teacher, ala Beat Takeshi in BR1… Riki Takeuchi! He’s inexplicably dressed like rugby player and holding a football! "I am Riki Takeuchi!" he says …. and I wanted to fall down and piss in my pants laughing.
Ok, let’s take a break to talk about Riki Takeuchi for a couple of hundred words. For my money, he’s probably Japan’s greatest movie star right now, but only if the movies were are talking about happen to be straight to video yakuza movies, of which he seems to make dozens of every month. You may have seen him already in Takashi Miike’s Dead or Alive trilogy or in flicks like Wild Criminal or the Yakuza Way, which you can find in the US. He’s got this incredible face, this kind of spastic gangster mug right out of a manga comic. Met him once. Fantastically nice guy. He’d be great in a Hollywood movie, or even on the Sopranos methinks. Someone give him a job overseas. Now. Anyway, after so many silly yakuza movies, and a fair share of comedies, it is near impossible to take a step back and try and take Riki seriously as a dramatic actor. I mean, love the guy to death, but when he shows up dressed like a rugby player, and playing a character actually named "Riki Takeuchi," my inclination is to start rolling around on the floor and hooting. And I probably would have, if not for the fact that I was in an acoustically perfect screening room surrounded by sound engineers and studio suits. Keep in mind that this is not Riki’s first scene in the film. He’s supposed to show up early on sans the rugby uniform. Maybe the whole film has been building up to this one moment and Riki is adding a real touch of insane energy and black humor here. We’ll have to wait and see. I’d follow him to the ends of the Earth. But for others, perhaps those who don’t appreciate or know who he is and what he represents (meatball movie yakuza) his exaggerated performance could prove to be a real wild card.
Anyway, Riki is standing there dressed in a yellow rugby uniform, holding a goddamn football, with a silver metallic explosive collar around his neck. And as anyone who knows their way around the Battle Royale universe can tell you, when it starts flashing, as it is right now while resting around Riki’s neck, that means their damn fool head is about to be blown off. He say something to his students like "I always wanted to play ball with you guys," while they stand not knowing what to say and whether to laugh or cry (possibly like a lot of audience members at this point).
The cave starts shaking. Seems like that self-destruct sequence is kicking in for a classic "everything falls apart" ending ala X-2. Riki is about to blow up. So is the whole island it seems. As his students make a break for it, Riki yells "touchdown!" and dives with that there ball, and is summarily blown to bits off-screen.
Cut to an underground tunnel filled with yet more Al Qaeda by way of Harajuku teenagers who are rushing to freedom, not so heavily armed, not so Battle weary. Looks like they could be the extended ranks of the Wild 7. I felt way out of context here, with no familiar faces to guide me. The tunnel starts to rumble, either from Riki’s demise, or from the self-destruct gimcrack and it looks like they are trying to get the heck out of there before the place goes ka-pow.
Meanwhile, Shuya is still trying to get out of building and the escalating fire fight. But on the rocky surface below, it looks like a squad in infantry from the Japanese Self Defense forces have shown up to block the escape route. More gunfire and spent shells follow in rapid succession. This sequence is shot with the same sort of color-drained, strobing effect used in the Normandy sequence in Saving Private Ryan (If I’m not mistaken, the recipe for which goes something like this: shoot at 24 fps but with a 90 degree or 45 degree shutter angle to get very short shutter speeds, which will causing moving objects to strobe more, and will also cause some people to believe that their DVD player has gone daffy). This will no doubt cause some people to cry rip-off, but the fact that Japanese teenagers are involved took it more into the area of sick parody for me.
Then the film stopped. The lights went up. The Toei guys motioned towards the door. I wanted to tell them to let me stay right here until the show was over, but it but it was time to move on to the next stop: the set of the new Kamen Rider 555 movie. I can’t complain too much. But I can a little. I wish my memory was better. I wish I could have seen the whole thing.
But there you go. A reel or so of Battle Royale 2 – Requiem. What I saw was action-packed, was well-mounted, and I’m certainly looking forward to seeing the rest with all the fixings. The only possible speed bumps depend largely on how you feel personally about Riki Takeuchi and blatant shameless Spielberg quotations.
Oh, and how you feel about a movie where the heroes are terrorists trained by Sonny Chiba in Afghanistan and where the twin towers of the Tokyo Metropolitan Building crumble to the ground.
TokyoScope out …. but not down."
