One star. Rated R, for constant gory violence, nudity, profanity and a hilarious sex scene
By Derrick Bang
In case anybody has wondered, two
hours of gore-porn is a total yawn.
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| Impressed by the battlefield savvy demonstrated by her enemy, Artemisia (Eva Green) offers Themistokles (Sullivan Stapleton) a place at the head of her own army ... and, as an added inducement, a place in her bed. Will this Athenian commander succumb to such temptation? Do we care in the slightest? |
Director Noam Murro hasn’t the
slightest affinity for this material: no surprise, since his only previous
big-screen credit is the 2008 comedy bomb, Smart
People. I can’t imagine what led Warner Bros. to trust Murro with the
sequel to 2006’s unexpectedly popular 300,
but, then, I rarely understand what transpires in big-studio pitch meetings.
Not that Murro should shoulder
all the blame, with so much to spread around. I doubt any director could have
made much of the wafer-thin narrative that scripters Zack Snyder and Kurt
Johnstad audaciously call a screenplay. I always thought writers endeavored to
create characters whose thoughts and deeds would engage our emotions, but
Snyder and Johnstad apparently believe the same can be accomplished with
another splash of blood on the screen.
Not hardly.
Indeed, it’s difficult to
remember anything else taking place during this flimsy excuse for a movie.
Occasional scenes of stilted, woodenly acted dialogue aside, 300: Rise of an Empire is 102 minutes of
disembowelments, severed limbs and decapitations, seasoned with some slashed
throats and pierced eyeballs. And most of the interminable battle scenes are
filmed in loving slow-motion by cinematographer Simon Duggan, with the gallons
of splattered blood inserted later, via CGI sweetening.
If all the melees and close-up
hacking and slashing were projected at normal speed, this film probably
wouldn’t run more than half an hour. Which would be a good thing.
As an added bonus, this film’s 3D
effects were added after the fact, contributing to the overall murky pallor
that hangs over every frame. As was the case with Clash of the Titans and numerous other “fake 3D” efforts, many
sequences are so dark that it’s difficult to discern what the heck is
happening. Call that an unintentional blessing.
As adapted clumsily from Frank
Miller’s graphic novel Xerxes —
itself a sequel to his graphic novel 300
— this story occurs during the aftermath of the great battle that took place at
Thermopylae in 480 B.C., when King Leonidas and his “brave 300” gloriously
battled a much larger Persian army to a standstill. For a time.
