’300: Rise Of An Empire’ is shot in the same breathtaking visual style of the blockbuster ’300′ which starred Gerard Butler a few years back.

This film, however, is not a sequel. In fact, it runs parallel to the first one, so you don’t need to have seen the first movie to follow this one.

’300: Rise of an Empire’ is about an Athenian General, Themistokles (the very well chiseled, Sullivan Stapleton) who leads the Greek Navy against the Persian Navy, commanded by the awesomely fierce, awesomely hot, Commander, Artemisia (Eva Green)

The bloodthirsty, cunning, Artemisia who was born Green, was betrayed by her countrymen as a child, and now her only goal in life, is to wipe out every Greek on the planet. And she has the power to do so.

Besides able to decapitated a small army with one swing of her sword, she also has the help of her brother, the God-King Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) who has very good taste in jewelry and doesn’t look to bad in a gold lame loin cloth either..

Added to the mix of warriors…is the Spartan Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) who acts as both storyteller and leader. It’s her voice that guides us through the story.

Guess the writer, Zach Snyder, was afraid the audience was too dumb to figure out what’s going on by themselves.

For me, it was the two women, Eva Green and Lena Headey that elevated the film and kept me interested. These ladies are memorizing.

Yes, the 3D is good, but after awhile, having tons of blood, body parts and heads thrown out you, becomes a bit tiresome.

The film does have some humor that comes in a surprising way…Don’t want to spoil it, but it has to do with a visit Themistokles makes to Artemisia’s ship to talk truce, but they don’t get too much talking done.

’300: Rise of an Empire’ opens in theatres Friday, March 8th and is based on the graphic novel Xerxes by Frank Miller.

I gave it 4 bagels out of 5 because in the end, I really did find it great fun.