A Bloody Epic Battle

Rating: 7/10 (11 March 2007)

The new Frank Miller graphic novel epic brought to life on the big screen can be summed up the three B's on man movies: Blood, Boobs, and Bangin.
To call 300 anything more than what it aspires to be would be a disgrace to its filmmakers. If anyone, at any time, during the production of this film, honestly said to themselves, "you know, we could win an Oscar for best picture for this movie!", then I'd honestly hand over my left kidney to them. Anybody with a brain knows that 300 is not about the heart, but the brawn. The film takes place in ancient Greece, following the Spartans and their king, Leonidas, as they struggle to push off the yoke of an oppressive Persian Emperor. One day a messenger from the Persian emperor comes to Sparta reminding Leonidas that he must pay tribute to the oppressor. Leonidas refuses, killing the messenger and thus angering all of Persia, who come to his doorstep to return the favor. Leonidas is meant to come off as brave, valiant, and a true warrior, but much of the time he merely comes off as foolish. When he is about to kill the messenger, the messenger says, "This is madness!" to which Leonidas defiantly replies, "THIS IS SPARTA!" while I thought there thinking, "Okay, impressive, but still, kind of stupid of him." As most anyone knows, 300 is about a valiant group of Spartan warriors who stood their ground against thousands for Persian forces, ultimately losing, but paving the way for a defeat of Persian armies later. Without the sacrifice of those 300, the defeat of the army would have been impossible. All these themes of sacrifice, memory, honor, and courage serve well to somehow justify all the blood being splattered in our faces, and they do get a rise out of the audience, but they are still quite clearly slapped on there. We can't kid ourselves. It's all about the ass-kicking.
And unfortunately, 300 doesn't get truly ass-kicking until about an hour or so in, which is a strong detriment to the film. I came to see Persians getting the crap kicked out of them, and yes, though I do appreciate a backstory and a build-up to the main action, much of the emotional posturing could have been done without. The audience knows they didn't some to see some powerful Shakespearean love story of war and betrayal. They came to to see blood flying and unabashed gore. 300, on this front, does not completely deliver. True, there is a lot of sweet action and fantastic visual effects, but it takes a long time to build-up to them, and whenever the action diverges back to the town of Sparta or to the camp of Xerxes, the Persian emperor, I got restless and wished they would just move on with the action. Political movements behind the scenes in Sparta abounded, but they seemed entirely pointless, and even if they weren't, we did not need to see that much. Xerxes's base camp was laughable in it sheer lesbian debauchery. I just sat there shaking my head at the silliness of it all, wishing I could get back to what I had come for: blood.
All this being said, what relatively little action there is is done amazingly well. The many battle scenes are breathtaking, captivating, eviscerating, and mind-blowingly spectacular. They are not hampered by a PG-13 rating like Lord of the Rings, and thus, there is no limit to where they can go. A man's head can be sliced off directly in front of the camera, fall off, and go tumbling past so that I can see flesh and bone fly by. There are several sliced heads, severed limbs, and plenty of interesting splatter effects from the blood, which I never got tired of seeing. And it's not just constant splattering either. The choreography and camera-work in the battle scenes is quite well accomplished. Every single man in the 300 is digitally enhanced so that they have six packs and pecs like Arnold Schwarzenegger - quite the accomplishment, though sometimes I just laughed at how ludicrous it was. This, though, combined with the blood spatters, the cool cinematography, and the color-palette, all combined to make a visually fascinating experience.
The acting was surprisingly good, too - nothing Oscar-worthy, but every performed in a rousing, screaming, bloody, melodramatic way that it fit the Spartan world perfectly. Gerard Butler as Leonidas portrays the Spartan king perfectly, screaming all the way. He carries a LOT of charisma, too, and steals every single scene that he is. Dominic West as Theron, another main warrior, is well played too, but of special note is David Wenham, who played Faramir in the Lord of the Rings, and plays Dilios to perfection in 300. Every other performance is everything you'd expect from this type of movie - boring, over-the-top, and predictable. Rodrigo Santoro is almost laughable as Xerxes - he comes off as a flamboyant jewelry-obsessed pansy more than a powerful world conqueror.
300 was based on a graphic novel, so the reason for its visual style is clear, a graphic novel that was created by the same man who penned and drew Sin City, the film version of which I found far less satisfying than 300. I always found Sin City to be nothing more than black and white hedonistic trash. Nothing was special about it at all except its style. It didn't even have cool action. It was all just a depressing and decrepit picture. 300, on the other hand, manages to contain BOTH style and amazing action. The story is still nothing special, but it's only a vehicle for the violence, so who really cares? Like I said, blood, boobs, and bangin'.