Movies

300 Review

While this most definitely is a guy movie in many respects, that shouldn't deter the ladies from seeing this movie, especially if the ladies like seeing really buff guys for 2 hours straight (Kitty, I'm looking in your direction!).

The movie is adapted from Frank Miller's (also the genius behind Sin City) fanciful retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae fought in 480 BC during the attempted conquest of Greece by the Persian Empire. It is a battle that has achieved an almost legendary status because of how badly the Spartans were outnumbered and their subsequent valiant defence.

And white the historian in me cringes at the inaccuracies, 300 nevertheless makes for a good movie experience mainly because the director (Zach Snyder) does an excellent job of staying true to Miller’s version of event’s and not Herotodus’. As a result the movie takes on an artistic quality as all the background scenery is computer generated as is the massive Persian army we are frequently shown.

As for the fight scenes, they are expertly filmed and captivating to watch and more fortunately, they comprise about 2/3 of the movie leaving the remainder to a bit of expository to Spartan ways (eugenics, its legal system, its ethos vis-à-vis an army’s conduct in the field, namely, no surrender whatsoever), a bit of the back-story behind Leonidas (Gerrard Butler), and his wife’s (Lena Headly) efforts to compel the recalcitrant Spartan senate to reinforce Leonidas’ meagre force.

However, the movie is far from perfect. A lot of the dialogue is overwrought (which worked well in Sin City’s film noir motif, but not here in ancient Greece) and to be fair, none of the actors really stand out in their performances, save for Gerrard Butler and his refined Scottish accent which is a pleasant counterpoint to all the BBC English accents spoken by the rest of the “Spartans”. Also, some of the scenes with the T&A seem tacked on just for the guys in the crowd (and, as a guy, I can’t say I cared especially though the A belongs to Leonidas).

Nevertheless, 300 makes for an entertaining movie and does impart a slight history lesson on the public that they might not have known about which is always good. So if you like a movie with a lot of action and not so much exposition, then I would recommend 300. And even if you don’t care for that sort of thing, it’s still a far sight better than say, Wild hogs.