300: Rise of an Empire makes a rather interesting gambit about halfway through: it kind of becomes a love story. A completely deranged one, but a love story all the same. It’s kind of subversive in its own way, the film breaking through the pattern of extreme violence to examine what passes for love among people so devoted to dealing out death. Unfortunately, we do not get the full picture, as the local release has been sanitized to fit the R16 rating. And this apparently means showing a multitude of maimed bodies on screen, while removing almost all trace of sexual relations.
While Leonidas and his 300 Spartans defend Thermopylae from God King Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro), Athenian hero Themistokles (Sullivan Stapleton) leads a ragtag band of farmers and craftsmen against the overwhelming force of the Persian Navy, led by the ruthless and vicious commander Artemisia (Eva Green). With only a few ships at his disposal, Themistokles must use guile and strategy to overcome the sheer numbers of the Persian force. He fights well, earning the respect and admiration of Artemisia. But his eventual defeat is all but certain, unless the Greek city-states unite to defend their freedom.
What follows is a predictable excess of violence. Though a greater emphasis is given to the Athenian tactics, it all still boils down to limbs being severed and lives being lost. Though the film manages to look quite good while doling out its digital blood spatter, the violence does become wearisome after a while. There is just so much of it that the deaths are rendered meaningless. And aside from a couple of inspired sequences (particularly one that involves a long, unbroken take and a horse), it all feels rather same-y. It becomes difficult to tell one bloody death from another, the film basically playing out a set pattern of violence.
But there is something more intriguing lurking in between these scenes of gratuitous blood and gore. The film develops a rather strange romantic subplot involving the rival generals. It turns the mutual admiration between Themistokles and Artemisia into palpable heat, creating the conditions for a rather absurd but undeniably original tragic love story. This unexpected development offers the film some vitality, but it is undermined here by the cuts made to make it fit the R16 rating. What appears to be a crucial sex scene is excised from the local version, taking away from the powerful chemistry developed between the two leads.
It’s a real shame, because their chemistry is the only thing that really rises above the growing tedium of the violence. Sullivan Stapleton makes for a fine enough hero, but he really comes into his own as he depicts the distinct brand of insanity that is his character’s attraction to the enemy. And Eva Green is fantastic all around. She is the single best thing in this movie, and her feminine wiles are put to their best use in her character’s attempts to turn the Athenian to her side. The rest of the actors are fairly forgettable and prone to poor choices. But Stapleton and Green are really dynamite together.
It is really difficult to recommend 300: Rise of an Empire since we are not getting the complete vision. It might seem absurd to quibble about the loss of sexual content in a film that’s already delivers an excess of lurid material through its violence. But the content here actually seems to be vital to the overall effect of the film, which really does seem committed to the ludicrous attraction between these warring individuals. It is where the film finds a measure of joy outside the grim excess of the constant dismemberment. The film itself ends up with one of its limbs chopped off, and it doesn’t quite feel right.
My Rating:
