Why I Saw It: It looked like the most promising new release this weekend and I heard good things about Eva Green in it.
Cast: When the call sheet for the movie reads "dark-haired male with washboard abs" you can assume that those not already working for Marvel or DC are going to leave a little something to be desired. Sullivan Stapleton, best known for the show Strike Back is the lead hero, Themistokles. He is in very good shape and yells a lot. In short, he is the perfect 300 lead. Rodrigo Santoro returns as Xerxes and Lena Headey is the queen of Sparta again. Then there's a lot of other shirtless men who are in very good shape who I have never heard of before. The real star of this movie, and the one who bears the weight of its success or failure, is Eva Green who is wonderful. She's the evil, female Leonidas this movie needed, over the top in the way one must be for a 300 movie.
Plot: Like you need one? Ok, if you insist. The Battle of Thermopylae is perfect for a movie like this, hence the success of the first. The problem is, the rest of the battles of the Persian War are naval battles. I'm not sure why Marathon didn't get its own prequel but whatever. This movie pretty much covers the rest of the Persian War. There's a lengthy prologue followed by some battles on boats. That's not as intimate a setting as a land battle, so there a lot more men yelling at each other from boats and not actually fighting than in the first, but they make up for it with boat crashes. It's a fair enough trade off. While Themistokles is technically the lead and probably has the most screen time, this is more the story of Green's Artemisia trying to crush the Greeks and damn it, she's so engaging, I nearly found myself rooting for Persia.
Elephant in the Room: How accurate is it? Fuck off!!!
To Sum Things Up:
More than any sequel in recent memory, this is a case of "if you liked the original then you'll like this". It is incredibly violent, highly stylized, and not remotely historically accurate, filled with extremely fit men, some boobs too so there's something for everyone. The characters are thinly drawn but played by actors so committed to the parts that is works. I have a very hard time accepting the inaccuracy of it all, but if you don't and like all the things that 300 did, then this is going to be a treat. And, if that's not enough, don't you want to see how a movie so over the top that it involves a cavalry change in the middle of a naval battle?
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
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