Buff, baby-oiled beefcakes prance about in bulging leather underpants, letting out roars of pure testosterone and swinging their mighty swords as various bodily fluids spurt all around. As we journey for a second time through hyper-stylised, Zack Snyder-ified Ancient Greece in “300: Rise of an Empire,” it’s nigh impossible not to feel the flaming homoeroticism once again scorching the Athenian air. If anything, the homoeroticism has been knowingly amped up since Snyder’s 2006 comic-book hit: in an early scene of the Noam Murro-directed side-quel, one testy Athenian senator tells another to “shut [his] cock hole;” later, encountering General Themistokles (Sullivan Stapleton) watching tussling Spartan soldiers, Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) wryly remarks, “You’ve come a long way to stroke your cock while watching real men train;” having emerged from a pool of liquid gold, the bejewelled Persian god-king Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) walks away strutting his golden arse back and forth; and as if history had a sense of humour, the final clash is called the Battle of Salamis, for crying out loud.
And yet in spite of what appears to be an increased self-awareness in its own risible campiness, “Rise of an Empire” is quite a bit duller than the rip-roaring first “300,” telling a story that’s much less resonant than that of the brave 300 Spartans, and telling it clumsily. Though it starts off as an origin story for Xerxes, he’s all but forgotten until the final 15 minutes; the main story instead focuses on Athenian General Themistokles, who leads an army against war-crazy Persian naval commander Artemisia (Eva Green), with whom he develops a bitter and all too personal feud. Of course, there’s plenty of the slow-mo, fast-mo, CGI blood-splattered battle scenes which featured so prominently in the first film, only here they’re quick to grow monotonous; though they're pretty, we’ve seen them before, and here they’re fought by drab Athenian warriors, none of whom hold a Spartan torch to Gerard Butler's commanding King Leonidas (present only in brief flashbacks). By far the best thing in the film is Eva Green, whose viper hisses and piercing glares would be enough to scare off any Spartan army. With Stapleton’s grizzled hunk, Green also gets to take part in one of the most mental, and certainly one of the most aggressive, sex scenes in recent memory. Tellingly, Themistokles makes a point of switching position midway through to bend her over and take her from behind. Oo-er.
Rating: 5/10
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