Crows Zero II

Takashi Miike

Vanquishing your enemy is one thing, winning the hearts and minds of the masses is another.
Having fought his way to the top of the heap in the earlier film, Takiya Genji (Shun Oguri doing his best too-cool- for-school impression) now has to rally the students of Suzuran All-Boys High as they head into all-out war with rival Hosen Academy.
The idea that teenage life is war is not a new one. In Battle Royale (2000), students were literally forced to kill one another.
What that movie had going for it, and what Crows Zero II could certainly use more of, was a deliciously demented sense of black humour.
Without that, what you get is scene after relentless scene of teenage boys beating each other into bloody, pulpy mush.
Is it possible to escape from this cycle of violence and vengeance?
Director Takashi Miike, adapting Hiroshi Takahashi’s manga, suggests that it is. But that message is buried beneath all that boisterous brawling.

(ST)