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Overall Rating
  Awesome: 33.82%
Worth A Look: 22.06%
Average: 8.33%
Pretty Bad: 14.22%
Total Crap: 21.57%
10 reviews, 144 user ratings
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| 300 |
by Lybarger
"Larger than life and maybe a little too big."
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Testosterone does for “300” what steroids allegedly do for Barry Bonds. This adaptation of writer-artist Frank Miller (“Sin City”) and colorist Lynn Varley’s graphic novel is big, muscular and scores even when it shouldn’t. On the downside, you get a nagging feeling that there may be some long-term damage from enjoying the guilty pleasures the film offers.Actually, the filmmakers deserve credit for picking a frequently told but still compelling tale. Miller follows the outlines of a Greco-Persian battle that took place at Thermopylae (or the hot gates) in approximately 480 BC.
A team of 300 soldiers from Sparta led by king Leonidas (Gerard Butler from the “Phantom of the Opera”), along with warriors from surrounding city states, fought ferociously against a Persian force that numbered anywhere from 650,000 to one million men.
The odds can politely be called overwhelming, and Leonidas’ efforts are even opposed at home. While his wife Gorgo (Lena Headey) is passionately supportive, a member of the city’s council named Theron (Dominic West) thinks that Sparta might be better off under the dominance of Persian king Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro).
That’s about it for the story. Miller and director-co-screenwriter Zach Snyder (the recent remake of “Dawn of the Dead”) are selective with their history. While many of the famous utterances from historical accounts of the battle have been preserved (when told that Persian arrows would blot out the sun, the Spartans reply, “Then we’ll fight in the shade.”), the terrain and the costumes have been modified for what looks impressive instead of what matches the known facts. Well, it is a movie.
Snyder’s approach results in a film where the obviously computer-generated world is actually something of an asset. Because even the earliest accounts of the battle were mythologized, creating an environment that could only exist in fiction makes the story more convincing in context.
Snyder filmed the entire film, not in Greece, but in a soundstage in Montreal. As a result, “300” is heavily stylized in a manner that oozes testosterone. The film even seems to have been dipped in the hormone before shipping.
The screen is filled with lots of angry sweaty guys running around shirtless. The women in this world barely register, and the few that are around, like a young oracle, also demonstrate that clothing is optional.
There are lots of body appendages being hacked off during the battle. Limbs and occasionally heads fly off the way they do in a rendering factory. To his credit, Snyder, whose background is in commercials, has a knack for making the carnage look suitably thrilling and even dazzling. It’s morally contemptible and yet weirdly compelling.
The movie might have been more involving if the characters had been less simplistic. Butler, for example might have had more to work with if Lenoidas' sacrifice had a touch of madness to go with the altruism.
And Xerxes might have made been more than a destructive megalomaniac (he declares himself a god). A typical Freudian, for example, would have had a field day examining his attempts to conquer Greece after his father failed at the same quest.The story of the Spartan sacrifice is pretty much guaranteed to make for a riveting film. Miller should know, his book was inspired by the 1962 movie “The 300 Spartans.” Nonetheless, “300” would have been a truly Olympian feat if it had characters that were as finely wrought as the images.
link directly to this review at https://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=15601&reviewer=382
originally posted: 03/10/07 00:26:48
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USA
09-Mar-2007 (R)
DVD: 31-Jul-2007
UK
23-Mar-2007 (15)
DVD: 01-Oct-2007
Australia
05-Apr-2007 (MA)
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