300: Rise of an Empire

Starring: Eva Green, Sullivan Stapleton, Lena Headley, Rodrigo Santoro, Jack O’Connell, Hans Matheson, Callan Mulvey & David Wenham

Directed by: Noam Murro

Rating: ★★★

In obviously desperation, Hollywood decided that 300, a movie in which almost every single main character dies at the end, needed a sequel.

Or at least, not really a sequel, but a film made seven years after the first set concurrently to the events of the original.

Themistokles is prepared to fight to the death...

But in all fairness, I don’t really know why I am reprimanding a system that I clearly support. I paid to go and see this wholly unnecessary prequel-coinciding-sequel so how dare I question the powers that be? Their strategy clearly worked!

And, most importantly of all, 300: Rise of an Empire didn’t suck- a marvel that genuinely astounded me.

And the reason why it is actually worth watching is all down to one actress in particular- that of Eva Green- whose character and performance completely dominate and elevate an otherwise samey filler feature.

Eva Green, and her character Artemisia, are brilliant.

300: Rise of an Empire focuses almost entirely on the Battle of Salamis- a collection of sea battles in which Athenian naval commander Themistokles (Stapleton) takes on the might of the Persian army, led by Artemisia (Green). Throw in some back story about Persian King Xerxes (Santoro), references to the original movie and some cameo appearances, mainly from Queen Gorgo (Headley), and you have a chunkily plotted, but at times, highly enjoyable action packed spectacle.

Xerxes is back and as weird as ever...

The ‘freedom’ theme is still heavily thrust into the audiences’ faces, but this time a lot less effectively, as Themistokles tries his hardest to unite the warring tribes of Greece to stop the invading forces. This random subplot is just one of the many throw away parts of the movie, the worst being an aside about a father and son that almost exactly copies an important story from the first movie. And since the son is played by perhaps one of the very worst actors I have seen in recent times (O’Connell), it makes this part of the movie all the more painful.

O'Connell is a terrible actor. He's just dreadful...

Whereas Eva Green and Lena Headley have complete command of every scene they are in, O’Connell and other supporting players just disappear into the background. Even the protagonist can’t compete with the domineering female performances, making this a film all about strong women.

Which I really liked.

Lena Headley gives a dominating supporting performance as Queen Gorgo

Artemisia is an amazing character. Cut from the film noir femme fatale cloth, she is strong, sexy, intelligent, manipulative, evil and entirely hateful. But you love her anyway, because she is repulsive in the best way possible, and her love-to-hate-her factor is created almost entirely from an excellent performance by Eva Green. She may have sucked in Casino Royale, but here she gets to be a real villain, instead of a fake one that drowns herself in Venice for no good reason.

Artemisia takes the idea of a femme fatale quite literally...

Artemisia and Queen Gorgo lift 300: Rise of an Empire from a turgid B-movie to a hugely enjoyable trashy action thriller.  It’s rare that the women in these types of movies get better parts then the men, but in this film the male characters don’t even get a look in. Even though Gerard Butler is a terrible actor, Stapleton can’t come close to matching up to his thundering performance in the original, which is a real shame, but ultimately doesn’t matter because we have Artemisia instead.

Artemisia is one bad-ass lady...

300: Rise of an Empire basically consists of three sea battles, that all vary in their degree of entertainment. The first is by far and away the best, as we get to see Themistokles’ skill in commanding ships and being tactical in manoeuvring the Persians towards destruction. The second, which is mainly about explosives, looks great, but didn’t really enthral me, and the final one is over way to quickly, so that it can make way for the end credits. I found this strange, because the entire movie builds up to this huge battle, and then we never get to see it fully realised.

300: Rise of an Empire is, dare I say it, even more heavily stylised than the first film- something that I thought couldn’t be possible. This movie definitely has some amazing set pieces and impressive visuals, but it lacks something that original has. It tries to simultaneously be a carbon copy and entirely new. Adding floating dust and ember particles in every single scene and making every shot look like it is either milk white or chalky blue doesn’t really make a film ‘darker’ and ‘edgier’ or particularly original. It does. However, make it more annoying- about half way through I wanted to send an abusive email to whoever decided that wafting embers would build atmosphere- because they don’t.  

Why is everything so milky...?

The directing isn’t as fluid or as understandable- there are some very confusing shots- and added together with the disparate plot, it sometimes makes the movie hard to follow.

The fight scenes are really good, but they do tend to overstay their welcome because we’ve seen it all before- mainly because naval battles aren’t particularly thrilling. Once the spectacular first fight is over, I felt like it was time to move to land, but because they don’t the film quickly feels tedious as I didn’t really want to see the same thing repeated throughout the movie’s duration.

Honestly, how many sea battles can you watch before getting bored?

300: Rise of an Empire is a good watch if you just want to see a silly, stylish action packed flick with high levels of blood and guts. It may not be as good as the original, but the two female leads are so strong that the movie is worth a watch just for them.