300: Rise of an Empire isn’t about 300 and it isn’t about the rise of an empire, but the misleading title is the least of my concerns. See, I liked the original 300. Sure, it was fairly silly, and it wasn’t remotely historical, but as a ridiculously stylized heavily romanticized slow-motion-loving homoerotic orgy of violence it was quite a bit of fun. It didn’t take itself too seriously and was a fun popcorn flick. And it was moderately successful, so some studio exec dropped trou and squatted over a blank script to pinch out a sequel.

It runs more or less concurrently with the original 300, and concerns a ragtag group of wannabe soldiers led by the great Greek hero Themistocles, who have a small fleet of ships and are outnumbered 100 to 1 but that doesn’t matter because they’re going to fight anyway, to accomplish…well, something, it’s not really specified. Despite having no real training and despite the movie repeatedly telling us that THESE guys are nothing compared to the balls-to-the-wall insanity of Spartan soldiers, they prove themselves to be similarly invincible because, well, because fuck you, this movie doesn’t have to make any sense.

Opposing them on the sea is the genius commander of Xerxes’ navy, Artemisia, played by Eva Green wearing fishnet stockings and a leather cat o’ nine tails skirt which seems a little anachronistic but I’m not a historian.

According to the movie, she’s the only Persian commander with any talent or brains, so naturally she doesn’t use them and sends one of her toadying captains to lead the first assault against the Greeks. Themistocles knows the Persian ships are strong at the front and weak in the middle, so his game plan is to crash his ships into the SIDES of the Persian ships, which proves remarkably easy because the Persian ships basically sit around and wait for them to do it without bothering to take evasive action; 1-0 Greeks.

Artemisia is understandably pissed so she has iron weights strapped to the captain’s wrists and throws him over the side into the sinking blue oblivion of Davy Jones’ locker and asks which of her captains wants to take the next shot at the title. For some reason, one of them speaks up.

Next day it’s all foggy and a squadron of Persian ships sail out to meet the Greeks so the Greeks reverse and the Persians chase after them into the fog only to find…holy shit, they’ve been funneled into a narrow passageway with cliffs on either side! Seriously.

Questions pour down like drops of blood on glistening pectorals. How the fuck did that happen? Don’t the Persian captains know, hey, we’re only about a mile offshore, maybe we shouldn’t sail full speed more than a fucking mile into the fucking fog! And for that matter, where the fuck did all the Greek ships go? Did they magically teleport away?

Anyway, half the Persian ships smash into the walls of the passageway and the rest of them get wedged into place and then the Greeks leap dramatically off the walls of the cliffs, falling about forty feet down to the tangled web of broken wooden ship decks covered in salt water and blood, miraculously not breaking their legs in the process, and fuck the Persians up well and proper; 2-0 Greeks.

Artemisia invites Themistocles out for a meeting aboard her private ship and asks him to join her as one of her personal commanders. Then they fuck in one of the most ridiculously eye-rolling sex scenes ever to grace celluloid. It’s part sex, part fighting, a sixth wrestling, five-eighths equal opportunity rape, with some oxygen deprivation play mixed in for good measure. Anyway, at the end Themistocles says no, he won’t join her, and Artemisia gets pissed and kicks him off her ship.

Finally Artemisia decides to take matters into her own hands and sends an oil tanker in to dump oil into the ocean and smash into Greek ships and then explode which more or less decimates the entire Greek fleet. Themistocles rallies his last few ships to make their final attack and puts together a crafty plan. They attack and ships smash into each other and catch on fire and Themistocles reveals his genius master stroke.

A horse.

Yep, see, he predicted that a bunch of ships would smash together forming something like a land bridge and now he’s going to ride a horse along the slippery decks, covered with weaponry and corpses and smashed shards of wood, leaping from ship to ship, until he gets to Artemisia’s ship, and then he’s going to kill her, since she’s the only decent Persian war commander. This works perfectly. Hell, he even manages to ride a horse across a ship that is completely on fire, because everyone knows that horses aren’t afraid of fire. Themistocles gets aboard Artemisia’s ship, kills off her bodyguards and then it’s just a battle pitting 230 pounds of Sullivan Stapleton’s compressed muscle and rage against 92 pounds of Eva Green in a sexy corset and a sexy skirt.

They fight. Themistocles wins. Surprise! And then…the Spartan fleet arrives to help beat the Persians. Roll credits.

I realize I’ve been a little hard on this movie; but in reality, it’s not that bad. If you want to spend two hours watching attractive Caucasians in leather underwear slaughtering swarthy Middle Easterners (in slow motion) or if you want to see Eva Green topless (in slow motion) or if you want to see Sullivan Stapleton topless (in slow motion) this is the film for you.