'300: Rise of an Empire' directed by Noam Murro

Contrived and rather pleased with itself, the 300 franchise has provided us with it's second edition, some eight years after its first instalment.

This time rather than just the SPARTANS!! being involved and the focus being exclusively on the Battle of Thermopylae (or a hilariously inaccurate depiction thereof) this film encompasses the wider narrative of The Persian War and in particular Themistocles' Athenian led defence of his home city.

Not that the 300 series is in any way rooted or bound by historical fact. Some of the critics who have lined up to dismiss these films on this basis forget that these stories are based on a graphic novel and whilst graphic novels have much to say for them, sticking to realistic or accurate depiction of factual events is not a speciality of the genre.

Nonetheless, the film opens with a depiction of the Battle of Marathon, ten years previous to the events of the first film, which was a tremendous Athenian victory that drove off Xerxes' father Darius' invasion. The film would have us believe that Themistocles (played with a hilarious movable accent by Sullivan Stapleton) killed Darius personally and this is what transformed Xerxes into the weird bloke we see sitting on a floating gold throne in the first film.

Anyway, much back story then follows, which gets a little tedious whilst Artemisia, a Persian warrior princess (played with a grim malevolence by Eva Green) becomes the power behind Xerxes' throne. The two of them decide that pure evil is the best way to advance their plans for the conquest of Greece and that actually they are a bit tired of waiting for an opportune moment so they launch a huge invasion force on nasty looking ships.

Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey - Leonidas' wife from the first film) is narrating all of this and even she sounds a bit bored. This section, which encompasses around the first half hour, fails to command much attention from the audience. Indeed, failure to command catches on with the Persians as they continue their high levels of military incompetence from the first film in the opening naval battles.

That is with the exception of Artemisia, who seems to take quite a perverse pleasure in seeing the men under her command die. It turns out that she is purposely losing the war cause she has a bit of a thing for Themistocles. This is a 300 film so I will leave you to guess what happens next between these two...

Then Themistocles makes a lot a speeches (about 93) which all essentially say the same thing - that the Athenians are fighting for freedom and democracy against tyrannical Persia. All of which is at the very least vastly overstated given that ancient democracy only ever enfranchised a couple of hundred men (not women, slaves or freed slaves) in Athens at any one time.

It was therefore very disappointing to note that these speeches transposed modern democratic values onto a a system that, whilst revolutionary for its time, was nowhere near as free or as representative as this film has made out.

Nonetheless, I have criticised others for attacking inaccuracies in the film so back to the review... and by this point, after Themistocles' many, many speeches, we have finally reached the Battle of Salamis - a final naval engagement between the Greek and Persian forces. You do not need to have any knowledge of Ancient History to guess which way that one is going to go.

There is a fun intervention from the Spartans at this point and it is good to have Lena Headey and David Wenham back. This is the strongest of the battle set pieces and it cannot be argued that these sequences are not an interesting watch.

Unfortunately, the script simply does not lend any depth to these scenes. The characters (both major and minor) are wooden, two dimensional war film clichés. Having enjoyed 300 for it's sheer levels of camp, Rise of an Empire takes itself far too seriously to be a truly remarkable watch and it does not seem to be able to decide if it is a genuine attempt at depicting ancient warfare or a blood and guts comic like it's predecessor. Add to this some average direction and it is ultimately impossible to escape the conclusion that the series has become a victim of its own success.

NB: I do not own the rights to the photo used in this review and will remove it at the request of the rights holder.