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If you must see “300: Rise of an Empire,” a belated sequel to Zack Snyder’s uniquely visualized 2006 surprise smash “300,” see it for Eva Green. With her striking features, regal sneer, smoky voice and sexbot armor, she is the film’s most spectacular special effect.

Without the King Leonidas of Gerard Butler, the noble warrior-liege who blared, “This is Sparta,” in the first film, “Rise of an Empire” has a tough row to hoe.

Instead of Butler we get Melbourne, Australia-born Sullivan Stapleton of “Animal Kingdom” as fierce Athenian warrior Themistokles, who wants to unite Greece, including the reluctant and elitist city-state Sparta, against the Persians. Themistokles also wants to lead a hugely outnumbered Greek fleet against the Persian navy led by Green’s Arte­misia and her “Excalibur”-mask-clad personal guards.

In opening flashback scenes, Themistokles fires the arrow that brings down Persian King Darius (Igal Naor), making his son Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) heir. In scenes that don’t make a bit of sense, Xerxes is transformed by desert hermits’ dark magic from a mortal prince into the ornately-pierced, chain-and-stud bedecked bondage giant and “god-king.” Lena Headey is happily back as Queen Gorgo, holding down the Spartan fort while Leonidas is away.

Director Noam Murro, taking over from Snyder, is no hot new talent. His last credit was the short “HBO Imagine.” Snyder and Kurt Johnstad return as credited screenwriters based on the graphic novel “Xerxes” by Frank Miller. The dialogue is yet again a monotonous chorus of militaristic crowing, boasting, gloating and bombast, usually involving a person’s willingness to die pour la gloire.

Miller is particularly enamored of Shakespeare’s St. Crispin’s Day speech from “Henry V,” and we get at least four versions of it here. The Spartan men, who all resemble male models and love nothing more than to smash one another’s faces, play hard to get when Themistokles tries to enlist them. Later, the computer-generated Greek ships not very convincingly ram galley-slave-powered computer-generated Persian juggernauts in the Battle of Selamis, There is enough CG spurting ichor in “Rise of an Empire,” including an up-close-and-personal beheading, to satisfy the blood lust of even the thirstiest gore-hound. But it is Green and not the “tidal wave of heroes’ blood” that is the real attraction here. All hail Artemisia.

News Source: bostonherald.com