300: Rise of an Empire - film review

Structurally, Zach Snyder’s costly B-movie sequel is a dog's breakfast, but the 3D underwater malarkey looks incredible, the costumes are awesome and Eva Green is outstanding
11 March 2014

Back in 2006, Zach Snyder’s flesh-tastic, super-violent, visually innovative epic 300 was lambasted by the then Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said the film was trying to tarnish Iran’s image.

Snyder’s quasi-historical take on fifth-century conflict epic showed a band of Spartans displaying super-human valour against the vast armies of an effeminate, despotic Persian king. Eight years later, with rumours circulating that the sequel would show said king taking a male lover, news vultures anticipated nuclear meltdowns in Tehran. No such lover appears in the final cut but the Persians are, if anything, made to look even more pathetic this time around.

Iran’s current President, Hassan Rouhani, has yet to respond. I picture his advisers saying: “Leave it, Hassan! They’re not worth it!”

This costly B-movie reopens many old wounds. Snyder (not directing this time but the film’s producer and co-writer) once again uses a story and visuals provided by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, who were obviously told: more of the same, please.

The result, structurally, is a dog’s breakfast: an adventure that keeps harking back to the battle of Thermopylae. The action — complete with interminable voiceovers — takes place before, during and after that blood-bath. We get flashbacks to Gerard Butler’s hero, Leonidas. We get recycled quotes. If you’re familiar with 300, that’s a lot of repetition. If you’re new to the franchise, it’s confusing. Why this obsession with the Spartan dude?

It doesn’t help that the new good guy — an Athenian commander, Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton) — looks like Eric Clapton, sounds like an extra from Home and Away and has all the get-up-and-go of a wooden spoon. He leads decent poets and farmers into two big naval battles with swarthy, faceless troops, all led by the king’s brilliant strategist, Artemisia (Eva Green), who is somewhat sympathetic (and non-Persian).

The predictably fast-slo skirmishes that follow — directed with brazen efficiency by Noam Murro — are actually better than the bouts of band-of-brothers chit-chat from Themistocles. He tells his men that they’re “free to leave”. They stay put. Has he, perhaps, bored them rigid?

That said, some of the 3D underwater malarkey looks incredible, the costumes are awesome and Green is outstanding, especially in a (rough) sex scene. The stonkingly beautiful actress (never seen without lashings of kohl eyeliner) resembles the indie singer and Goth-princess Florence Welch. In fact, her writhing would make a perfect accompaniment to Welch’s anthem, Kiss With a Fist. The ending is a cop-out but Green’s confused harpy leaves a real bruise.

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