I went to see 300: Rise Of An Empire last night. Apart from being amazed by new fangled luxuries like electronic reclining seats and bars located in movie theatres I left disappointed.
Supposedly the plot for this movie is this (courtesy of IMDB): Greek general Themistokles leads the charge against invading Persian forces led by mortal-turned-god Xerxes and Artemisia, vengeful commander of the Persian navy.
That makes it sound like a fairly concise, taught plot. But the exact opposite is true. The story is a rambling drunken mess of flashbacks, slow motion cut scenes, and narration that drones on and on and on. In that sense, this movie was all at once trying to be a prequel, a sidequel (?), and a sequel. Scenes were shown from the past, in narration was coming from the future, and supposedly the 300 were actually in the middle of dying while this story was taking place. It was confusing from the get go and downright annoying towards the end.
Next would be the…constant….slow…motion…that simply wasn’t as well done as the original film. Zack Snyder did not direct this time around. That credit goes to Noam Murro. And while he does an excellent Snyder impression his work just can’t stand up to that of the master.
What’s the good stuff?
The actors all around. One thing I greatly appreciated is that a large part of the original cast made it into this film. Familiar faces like the original King’s messenger (Peter Mansah) and Daxos (The intense bald guy played by Adrew Peavin) make their way back into this movie. I just found it refreshing not to have a bunch of random people thrown it and was glad to see these actors getting work (I’m weird that way).
But this time around the women stole the show. Lena Headey has a couple great one liners and kick ass moments, but Eva Green owns this film from beginning to end. It’s to the point where you could cut out the rest of the movie and make it entirely about her. That type of ownership. We were primed to see her in this movie from the get go, but between her fight scenes and her speechifying I just want more Eva Green in everything. Simply Bad Ass.
The set design, costumes, and epic palaces were also great eye candy and there were some amazing glamour shots throughout.
But overall the movie just fails. It’s a high quality mess of a film, and while I would recommend it if you NEED an action fix this weekend you can wait for this to rent of stream, whichever comes first. It’s just not anything to get excited about.
2 out of 5 Arnolds.
Posted by Derek Scarzella
Derek Scarzella is a lone wolf running through the night with a heart full of dynamite and a limitless passion for Action movies and all things awesome. ‘Nuff said
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P.S For giggles…
