If I was a twelve year old boy and somehow got in to see this film I'd probably think it was the greatest film ever made.
What is it with really late sequels? Anchorman 2 just came out a mere nine years after the original and now 300: Rise of an Empire hits eight years after 300. 300 made a ton of cash, spawned an entire parody film and a TV show that featured slo-mo slicing and dicing ancient warriors with special f/x environments. But a new one is here, finally, and it lives up to expectations. There is tons of action with spurting blood and booming, thunderous drum music and hordes of armies and slo-mo dismemberments. This is, pretty much, the ultimate guy's movie. Blood and tits. I'm happy.
The first film was based on an awesome Frank Miller comic book that was loosely based on a presumptious true story about three-hundred Spartan warriors that held off an enormous Persian army thousands of years ago. This new film is also based on a Miller comic book but he hasn't finished it yet so as of now the credits saying the film is based on Xerxes by Frank Miller may be confusing to those surfing Amazon.com looking for it.
The plot sort of shrouds the original film's plot in that this new film is both a prequel and a sequel. Themostikles is the good guy, a proud Athens warrior leading his rag-tag army of supposed farm hands against Artemisia's legion of battle ships heading for Greece. While the lonely 300 are busy dying elsewhere up the coast, Themostikles goes to sea to fight and save his country.
The action scenes are pretty wild. This is, more or less, a modern Grindhouse film. The dialogue, characters, and plot are all seriously inept but the action is visceral, blood-soaked, incredulous, and certainly entertaining if you're a fucking sicko. Limbs fly, blood spurts in geysers, spears impale. It's wholesome fun.
The best part of this film is the action of course, but Eva Green as the super evil Artemisia is on fire here. What a villain. Even during sex she's only capable of hate-fucking. She isn't over-the-top, but she definitely revels in her witch-like she-bitch role.
The film was shot on green-screen sound stages, but it does look incredible. For such a dumb, violent film there is some really beautiful imagery here, especially the scene underwater after a fire bomb has destroyed a Greek ship and we see all of the lifeless bodies in the water amidst the splinters of wood, the weapons, the swirls of blood.
The sequences between the thunderous, visceral action scenes are very dull and borish, but the film is an entertaining popcorn spectacle that is, really, exactly what you might expect. If you're not a twelve year old boy then this might just be bloody fucking stupid tripe but you have to admit either way that it certainly packs a punch. ***
