Mar 08, 2014 12:05 PM
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Review of ‘300- Rise of an Empire’
This is a surreal action drama shot with comic like action photography called chroma key, reminiscent of the original ‘300’. Let’s get the temporal and spatial perspective right first.
The film is set in circa 500 BC(well before Christianity and Islam were established), and narrates the actions preceding and concomitant with the battle depicted by ‘300’.
Persian Empire with their Zoroastrian god-king, Xerxes(son of Darius), and the Greek are at war, with him out to avenge his father’s death. His most trusted admiral is a woman called Artemisia and her immediate target is the Greek General Themistocles, who also happens to be the man who killed Darius in an earlier battle.
The center piece of the film is the sea battle fought on oared Galleys ships from both sides in the Aegean Sea, the bay that lays between present day Greece and Turkey and where the Peloponnesian wars(first recorded great naval war) would be fought fifty years down the line.
The coming together of all Greek city states to beat the common enemy, The Persian Empire back has light resonance to present day Europe as it wards off the Chinese or the Russian challenge. Despite the complex lesson in history, the film is not too hard to follow as its USP lies with slo-mo action in 3D, rather than a complex script.
Also the voice over with the narrative and the dialogues are subtitled. Bordering on recreating a comic book with its color treatment and slow motion shots, it doesn’t get you to the edge of the seat, but keeps one engaged with simple story telling.
The film manages to wrap up before one gets tired of the repetitive bloodshed and is recommended only if you have stomach for glorified gore, a superfluous lesson in history and if you were at least mildly impressed with ‘300’. In the end one wishes that Indian filmmakers could as well sell us well packaged nuggets from our glorious history.
3.5 Stars.
PS- There was an exciting line up of Sci Fi movie trailers before the film.
