Gird Your Loins, Men!

Rating: 6/10 (27 March 2007)

It's amazing to me that "300" is being taken seriously enough to stir up so much controversy. Some say it's homoerotic, others that it's homophobic. Some say it's an indictment of the Bush Administration's attitudes about war, others that it's a right-wing, pro-war diatribe. Iranians are apparently offended by the portrayal of Persians in the film. There are at least three reasons that all of these people need to chill out about this movie: 1.) It's based on a graphic novel, and when was the last time we expected subtlety, realism or political correctness from a graphic novel? 2.) Since it's a virtual recreation of a previously existing graphic novel, the blame for its offensiveness should rest on Frank Miller, not the film. 3.) The movie isn't nearly intelligent enough or important enough to be offended by.
"300" is one long, witless, sustained shout of a movie. Sadly, the filmmakers take their purpose very seriously, so this has none of the knowing humour or kitsch value of "Sin City," the 2005 masterpiece that also recreated a Frank Miller world on the big screen. The creators of "300" seem to think they have an important story to tell, and they tell it with deadly earnestness. Therefore, every single line of dialogue, every gesture, every sound effect, is pitched at the same over-emphatic level, with the results being a poundingly monotonous movie.
After all the talk of the striking visual style, "300" ended up not being stylized enough for my taste. "Sin City" truly created a whole other world on screen; realism was not only ignored -- it was completely shunned. In "300," the artists try to create a realistic universe for their characters to move and fight in, so what we basically get in the end is an imitation of films like "Gladiator" and "Troy," with even less brains.
Not surprisingly, the movie is at its best when it's fighting. There are a couple of dazzling sequences, like the one in which our feisty band of Spartans sends a horde of Persians hurtling over a cliff; or a montage that shows an extended series of battles including charging rhinos and elephants. But any time it slows down for plot exposition or scenes of dialogue, you might as well hit snooze, because you're not going to miss anything important. None of the actors really makes much impression, though they probably deserve credit for even doing as well as they do, considering they had nothing but blue screens to interact with. Gerard Butler is o.k. as King Leonidas, but his mush-mouthed line delivery was a constant distraction. Rodrigo Santoro gets stuck with a humiliating role as Xerxes, king of the Persians. The costume designer bedecks him in jewels and piercings, and the sound team give him an electronically fake voice that sounds ridiculous coming from such a fruit loop of a character. But no matter. The only thing you really notice about any of the actors are their sculpted abs and pecs, which are on constant and prominent display. Indeed, by the end of the film, I was identifying the characters by their torsos rather than by any distinguishing personality traits, since there aren't any.
I was in the mood for a film like "300" and wanted desperately to like it, but it wore me down. Now I know how those Persians must have felt.
Grade: B-