Battle Royale - Special Box Set (Battle Royale / Battle Royale II)

I love this set of movies, I have rented Battle Royal 1 & 2 before and sure it is gory but this fast review or warning is not about that, it is about the last or 3rd disc in this special box set:

Battle Royal Supplement as the special features dvd is called is in Japanese which is fine considering you would think since Battle Royal 1 & 2 have subs in English,Korean. This is not the case for this last disc, it is ONLY subbed in Korean, which is a BIG Let Down for people like me who only know English or another language that is not Korean, I really think it sucks that they pulled this but I have noticed that company's do this alot of times when it is a specific region based DVD...None the less it is a Great,graphic series like other reviews have stated and if you can handle it you should check it out.

Note: A few things here; At the beginning of Battle Royal there will be a Special Edition words that pop up on the screen or something like that, I have not noticed anything different about the Normal or Original versions of the films. Also, unless you want a nice box to hold both movies in one single DVD case than I would suggest skipping this to go get them separately,except if you know Korean to watch the separate Special Features.

Bought this for my husband since he's a huge fan of the first movie, and wanted to see the second. Arrived on time and packaging was good. In transit (or maybe before) one of the plastic pieces holding the DVDs in place broke, so the DVD was loose in its case. But it wasn't scratched, so no harm, no foul.

Biggest complaint is that the case and quite a bit of the DVD menus are in Korean. It does have Japanese audio with English subtitles, but everything else is in Korean. I didn't see anyone else mention that in the reviews, and it took us by surprise when we opened up the box and couldn't read most of the writing on the DVD case. You can still play the movie just fine, but if you're a fan of selecting scenes, or want to watch the special features, you will not like this. It's all in Korean.

Also, translation of movie is merely ok. Not horrible, but there are a lot of grammatical errors, spelling errors, or simply just wrong translations. Husband speaks Japanese, and a couple of time he would stop the movie to comment that the translation was not accurate at all. Like the main character would say "We need to run north" and they would translate it as "We can't stop running." Stuff like that. Nothing too big, but still kind of frustrating considering the amount of money you're spending for professional translation/subtitles.

But if those things don't bother you, then I would strongly recommend this product.

PS: The region encoding is advertised as only region 1, but it's actually good for all regions. So that's a plus. :)

Imagine this: a country is run by a totalitarian government, which occasionally selects groups of teenagers to methodically kill each other, until only one remains.

"The Hunger Games"? No, actually it's "Battle Royale," a bloody and harrowing movie that came out several years earlier, depicting an alternate Japan where the youth are forced to kill each other. The first film one of those movies that is strangely fascinating and filled with social commentary, but the sequel falls short with its clunky message and suspenseless violence.

"Battle Royale": A class of high-schoolers are being transported on a bus, when they are gassed to unconsciousness. When they awake, they have electronic collars around their necks. A former teacher named Kitano explains that they have been chosen for the B.R. ("Battle Royale") Act, wherein teenagers are forced to fight each other to the death until only one is left standing.

If you don't play, try to escape, refuse to kill or stray into a "death zone," the collars explode. Each teenager is given food, water and a random item, and are set loose on a remote island. As the teens slowly weed each other out, Shuya Nanahara and his girlfriend Noriko try to find a way out that doesn't involve death. But if they refuse to kill, then they must escape the fascist nightmare... which no one has done before.

"Battle Royale II: Requiem" takes place a few years later -- another group of teenagers are gassed, and wake with the explosive electronic collars. But their Battle Royale is a little different: they're put in pairs and given 72 hours to storm a remote island stronghold and kill Shuya Nanahara (who has since become a terrorist). If one partner dies or runs away, the other one explodes.

Sent to attack Shuya and his little band of rebels, the teens are slowly weeded out by gunfire, explosions and their own growing panic. But when set free, they must ask themselves if Shuya is someone they really want to fight against - or someone they want to fight alongside. And they have to ask it fast, because the government is about to storm the island

"Battle Royale" is a classic example of a brilliant movie.... and its inferior sequel. Kinji Fukasaku's "Battle Royale" is a masterpiece of shocking violence and social commentary -- it's a bloody, suspenseful look at how humans react under threat of death, and how far people would go to survive. Even more striking is the look at brutal governments who just LOVE punishing innocent people.

And the acting is simply sublime. Takeshi Kitano is bonechilling as the former teacher who now sentences his students to death, and Tatsuya Fujiwara and Aki Maeda give stellar performances as ordinary kids who are forced to fight for their freedom.

Sadly, the sequel (which was directed by the original director's son, Kenta Fukasaku) doesn't manage the same level of brilliance. It tries to shock us even more by having more people die more violently, but there are only a few scenes of suspense over who will die. So there's just lots of people we don't know being gunned down in a splatter of blood and explosions. Tatsuya Fujiwara is the sole character who is really striking, playing a hardened, haunted man with a crusade.

Also, the sequel starkly contradicts the original movie's message, a timeless tale that could be set in any country across the world. Here, the hostility towards Shuya's terrorists is all blamed on the United States (yes, it's not the JAPANESE government's fault, but the US... because we fight terrorists, and all terrorists are secretly good guys), and we get a bizarre hackneyed scene all about how the people of the Middle East are all shining saints. It's doesn't fit the Battle Royale story.

"Battle Royale/Battle Royale II" contains one brilliant movie and its mediocre sequel, which is notable mainly because of Tatsuya Fujiwara's brilliant performance. So watch the first, skip the second.

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