300: Rise Of An Empire

(MA15+) ★★

Director: Noam Murro.

Cast: Sullivan Stapleton, Eva Green, Rodrigo Santoro, Callan Mulvey, Jack O'Connell, Lena Headey.

Shirts are for wimps. Obviously

Word of the day: "sidequel".

It's where a film (or TV series or book) takes place at the same time as its predecessing film.

So 300: Rise Of An Empire is the sidequel, not sequel, of Zack Snyder's violent historical reimagining of the Battle Of Thermopylae.

It's narrative arc begins before the 2007 film's setting and finishes after King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans have fought the forces of Persian god-king Xerxes at the Hot Gates, and looks at the greater war happening at the same time.

The focus is on Themistocles (Stapleton), who rises to prominence after leading the Greeks to victory over the Persians at the Battle Of Marathon and killing the Persian king Darius in the process.

Darius' son Xerxes (Santoro) is goaded into revenge by vicious general Artemisia (Green), who manufactures Xerxes' rise to god-king status and sets about orchestrating the Persian Empire's second invasion of Athens.

Based on a yet-to-be-published graphic novel by Frank Miller, Rise Of An Empire definitely strives for the same Miller-inspired visuals of Snyder's film (which was based on a graphic novel as well).

Computer-generated blood gushes, the amount of slow-motion probably adds 20 minutes to the film, and every background is drawn from the same visual effects pallette - the highly stylised look of 300 returns and it's one of the best aspects of this follow-up. It's definitely pretty to look at, in as much as this kind of cartoonish, over-the-top violence can be "pretty".

But as the limbs go flying and heads start rolling, so too do all notions of logic, physics and history. This is to be expected in a film where historical figures such as Xerxes and Artemisia are redrawn as an eight-foot-tall mutant and a goth wet dream respecitively, but when you draw a CG moon into the background that is about 100 times bigger than any moon you've ever seen, it tends to rip you away from the reality the filmmakers are trying to create.

This enormous moon is symbolic of where Rise Of An Empire goes wrong. There's over-the-top, and then there's just bafflingly insane. A pointless sex scene in the middle of the film is unintentionally hilarious, but the film can't muster enough of a sense of humour to salvage the moment and embrace how laughable it has become.

Other way-too-bonkers moments, such as using a horse in a naval encounter, are an attempt to one-up 300, but the film devolves into a vague repetition of sea-battle after sea-battle, all the while lacking the emotional core Gerard Butler and his Spartans provided in the first movie.

Aussie Sullivan Stapleton, adopting the faux-British accent we've come to expect in all historical films, does an admirable job with the endless soldier-stirring speeches he has to give, and if nothing else, here's hoping this sets him on a path to the A-list because there is plenty of potential in his performance.

Green also gets some serious credit for what is likely to be a love-it-or-hate-it performance. For my money, it's a memorable and enjoyably devilish turn as the warmongering warrior princess Artemesia, and Green saves Rise Of The Empire somewhat.

Fans of the first film will probably enjoy this return to Snyder (who's back as producer) and Miller's loose interpretation of the ancient Mediterranean, but even they will feel this is a disappointing follow-up.