Breaking ground that's already been broken is not "Ground-breaking"

Rating: 2/10 (16 March 2007)

No doubt you've heard of "300" by now? For the past six months, I haven't been able to browse the internet for five minutes without running across the film's blood-spattered logo. And thanks to funding from the Warner Bros. promotions department, you can now save up to 300 pictures on your MySpace page. I'm just waiting for them to send me $300 for sitting through one of the most boring films I've seen in years.
Oh, but wait, I go to movies hoping to see interesting characters do interesting things. Silly me, this is a film for people who like to see brawny men with perfect six-packs slash people open and run them through in slow-motion while blood and slurping sound effects satisfy their blood lust. Never mind a creative story! What was I thinking??
Basically, if you've seen "Gladiator", "Braveheart", "The Patriot", "Troy", "Alexander", "King Arthur", and "Kingdom of Heaven", you've seen "300". The film opens with deep rumblings on ancient instruments while a narrator catches us up on eons of history and tradition  in this case, how Spartan warriors were manufactured. And how the Persians want to rule the world, and how the Spartans aren't crazy about that idea, but how their politicians aren't crazy about going out to fight, and how King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) isn't crazy about the politicians.
So Leonidas defies the Council (surprise!) and takes his three hundred Spartans out to fight the Persians, leaving behind (surprise!) a wife and son. The army is (surprise!) outnumbered, but they are (surprise!) better strategists. There are some shifty-eyed traitors (surprise!), and certain key characters will (surprise!) give their lives, driving the ones who cared about them to (surprise!) frenzied madness.
There are rousing speeches that an army of ten thousand can all supposedly hear, long fights that put the plot on hold for ten minutes or more, excited young warriors and crusty old ones, a leader repeatedly yelling "Spartans!" in an English accent (the universal "foreign language"), and even a wheat field for a warrior to walk through. Where's Russell Crowe when you need him?
It's not that any of this is done carelessly or less ably. It's just that it's all been done before. Many times. Somewhere in a Hollywood library there's a book titled "The Epic War Movie Formula", I'm sure of it.
Knowing they had nothing new on their hands, Hollywood fell back on its usual methods for creating novelty out of nothing. I can hear the producers now: "More slow-motion! More blood! More sex!" And that's what we get. Apparently it worked: "300" topped the box office during its first weekend out. The showing I attended was populated with about eight people, all of us male, half of us below 35, and two of them right in front of me going "Oooo!" at each new death.
When Quentin Tarantino created "Pulp Fiction", he said he hoped its success would legitimize violence as an art form. His dream has come true: The fight choreography in "300" borders on a gruesome and ultra-bloody ballet, if ballet were set to electric guitars. This is the first film I've seen based on a Frank Miller graphic novel (highbrow term for "comic book"), and its veneration of gore does not inspire me to rent "Sin City".
Thanks to the wonders of computer imagery we are treated to two decapitations. No need to slyly edit around the part where an actor is replaced by a headless mannequin. Now computer artists can simulate the blade going through the skin tissue and spine, leaving the slightest layer of epidermis to hold the head in place until it tears and the head tumbles to the ground while the neck compulsively spurts out the body's pressurized blood and the corpse collapses, all in glorious slow motion. If that description sounds cool to you and has you licking your lips like Joaquin Phoenix in "Gladiator", fine, go see "300". Just don't come near me or my family.
And certainly don't go expecting to learn any real history. Among other issues: While "The Patriot" consulted the Smithsonian on accurate costuming, "300" apparently consulted Playgirl Magazine. I had no idea ancient Sparta was so chock-full of sexy brainless men who would rather show off their pecs than wear life-saving armor!
While it's never a point of discussion, "300" would also have us believe that the heroic Spartans are the happily married heterosexuals, while any homosexuals and transsexuals are all members of the enemy Persian camp. Interesting that a movie with this unspoken prejudice would be slipping under today's Radar of Tolerance so easily.
So this is what modern movie making has come to. With the way the guys in the audience around me were eliciting grunts of approval over each "awesome" beheading or dismemberment, I figure it won't be long before we're charging admission to let people watch political dissidents and Christians get thrown to lions. I'm glad our culture has become so civilized.