And even though the news of Leonidas’s death heightens the Greek cause, his task of holding off the coordinated Persian effort is made all the more arduous because he must meet them in the choppy waters of the Aegean Sea - waters the slave armies of Persia cannot claim to know as well as their foes. With their fall, it is now Themistokles who must unite Greece and mount a strong defense of his own with a largely outnumbered Athenian army. Seeing King Darius’s death as a provocation for war, the Persians gather forces from all corners of their world empire, and set out on Greece (only to find that initial resistance from a certain group of Spartans). Mourning his father’s loss, Xerxes, a meek young warrior, is challenged to become ‘divine’ by Artemisia (Eva Green, “ Dark Shadows”), a troubled young woman hell-bent on seeing Greece crumble and who also later becomes a Persian Naval Commander. This tale goes back about ten years earlier, when the Athenian General, Themistokles (Sullivan Stapleton, “ Gangster Squad”) killed the great Persian King Darius, father of Xerxes. It begins shortly after the death of King Leonidas, as Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey, “ The Purge”) tells her men about the ‘god-king’ himself, Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro, “ The Last Stand”) and how he came to be. Keeping with the mystical gray camera, visceral blood-letting from open neck wounds and uniquely shot sword fights, the movie effectively instills an ashy, fabled sort of feel, but lacks in narrative and character development. For eight years, fans of “ 300” have been wondering how the film would be followed up - could the heroic sacrifice of King Leonidas and his brave 300 Spartans be outdone? With his sophomore effort, Noam Murro (“Smart People”) says, “yeah, kinda,” with his fairly praisable sequel 300: Rise of an Empire.
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