Jack Goes Confidential: ‘300: Rise Of An Empire’—Bloodbath Gone Wild

We’ve all heard of an EXTREME screen, but nothing that I’ve seen in recent memory prepared me for the visual bloodbath of 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE…

It’s the follow-up to the Zach Snyder-directed 2007 graphic, box office hit ‘300.’

Take note though that here Snyder turns the directorial chores over to Noam Murro (‘Smart People’) and sticks instead to co-producing and co-writing.

300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE pits Themistocles against the massive Persian forces led by mortal-turned god Xerxes and Artemisia, vengeful commander of the Persian navy.

And this time the filmmakers of the epic saga have set most of the stylistic action on a fresh battlefield—the high sea—as Greek general Themistocles now attempts to unite all of Greece by leading a charge that will change the course of the war.

(Actually it’s all pretty Greek to me.)

Oh, and if you’re looking for Gerard Butler to reprise his previous starring role, that’s really not what’s going down here.

Leading this blood-splattered, big-screen saga is sexy Eva Green whose major claim to fame probably came in the 2006 James Bond adventure CASINO ROYALE where she was Daniel Craig‘s love interest. She was also seen in Tim Burton‘s DARK SHADOWS.

Now let me just give it to you straight; as Artemisia she’s one tough—no, make that mean— cookie. Green’s scene stealer has her decapitating some poor bastard with a couple of swift strokes.

And yet, there’s MORE to this scene!

After the decap Green grabs the dude’s head by his hair and lifts it up alongside her own head, eyeball-to-eyeball. Then—you guessed it—she kisses him on the mouth while his torso falls backwards into oblivion.

So it goes in an incredibly bloody one hour and 43 minutes of severed limbs, impaled bodies, squirting blood and gore galore.

A lot of it in slow mo no less.

So how did they get away with an R -rating? Beats me.

When you go to the MPAA’s ratings website FilmRatings.Com, they put it this way:

“Rated R for strong sustained sequences of stylized bloody violence throughout, a sex scene, nudity and some language.”

However that really doesn’t do this over the top, blood-soaked epic justice.

In all fairness I must say the spectacular CGI staged sea battles are impressive.

I’ll wager the lion’s share of the movie was acted out in front of a green screen.

And the film’s conversion to 3D is very effective here and well worth the up charge. (It’s showing citywide in both 2D and 3D formats.)

A memorable line from the pounding soundtrack states that, “We are turning young men into memory.”

Quite the understatement.

All that plus a pretty graphic rough sex sequence making for quite a night at the movies with 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE as Warner Brothers lets the blood squirt AND fly….

My grade: Acting a C- / Effects an A-.

Oh and please, leave the kids at home.

(Reviewed at Cinemark, Merriam)

JACK GOES TO THE MOVIES Friday mornings at 6:40 a.m. and 8:40 a.m. on KMBZ FM and AM.