The ultimate, raw fanboy-fodder

Rating: 7/10 (21 March 2007)

The experience of watching "300" is much like unravelling a candy box of action goodies, glazed in pure testosterone. Certainly fanboys will hungrily lap it up  and although it is neither a very nutritious nor lasting meal, it'll give you a high of cheap thrills and gore galore for a solid and surprisingly swift 2 hours of runtime. I got to see the film at a preview in Paris and the demographic make-up of the theatre was some 98% men, 1.9% their girlfriends  and me.
Storywise, "300" does not throw the net wide: it narrowly zooms in on the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. as led by Spartan king Leonidas (Gerard Butler) and his 300 elite soldiers against 1 million Persians led by Persian God-King Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro). Much has been sacrificed to pursue this sliced-down-to-the-bare-essentials trajectory, but the story is diluted by the dutiful formula ingredients of father-son relations, talkative politics and amour. These are all pitiful story lines woven together by the core battle  what we really wish to see. However, I will concede that they are highly necessary in the film in providing relief in between the epic attacks.
There is always a crux with primarily visual-driven films, and in "300" this problem is reality. Forget the actual events at Thermopylae  this is trivial to the story the film wishes to tell  the problem is that it lacks authenticity visually and dramatically. Owing to the narrow cleft by the beach in which all of the battle takes place, dramatic scenery is sparse by nature (unlike, for example, LOTR where landscape alone provided visual stimuli). To compensate for this, post-production has gone absolutely overboard with a throbbing CGI-overdose to fit Frank Miller's graphic novel format  even the sky is so über-stylized with sepia-tinted shades and shadowy contrasts that the cumulative effect is special effects gaping, swallowing and ultimately drowning "300". In the end, there is only a tiny shred of reality left, so distant that you need binoculars to make it out, and this is expected to ground the whole spectacle. Needless to say, this proves a wholly impossible task for director Zack Snyder.
When you couple this visual fantasy with antique, readily-molded speech dialogue, there is regrettably even less authenticity left. Everything feels unbelievably staged, from Lena Headley's impossibly rehearsed counsel to her husband to Gerard Butler's rallying tagline cries. It should however be noted that nearly all of the the cast perform well in their respective parts. Headley in fact finds a surprisingly firm footing in a character that is largely at the mercy of an underwritten nature. The damsel in distress? The tough-chick? The aloof queen? A concerned mother? A loving wife? She locates them all and merges them together in the character of Queen Gorgo. Gerard Butler manages to weave together good screams, nice abs, a fair authoritative presence and not much else into a performance. The most huh-eliciting actor's presence is by far David Wenham who may look amazingly good, but provides silly narration that is altogether incongruous to the steaming macho vibe of the rest of the film. Most of the time he sounds like a hobbled little magician, selling trinkets in the bazaar. The rest are something of one-dimensional goons, but the eerie, puzzling performance by Rodrigo Santoro deserves credit, resonating with Lawrence of Arabia undertones but blown so far out of proportion the whole affair becomes a theatric affair.
In spite of the aforementioned problems, "300" basically achieves what it set out to do. It is, in effect, an extended version of its adrenaline-pumping trailer, fit for fanboy worship and art-house cinema mockery. You have to admire the blatantly homo-erotic parade of well-oiled six packs, the dramatic symmetry in the epic battle visuals and the goose-bumps inducing scope of the spectacle. One of my favourite parts of The Lord of the Rings trilogy was the massive attack of the oliphants on Gondor, and "300" offers similar but even more OTT extracts with Persian invaders, who bear an eerie resemblance to the south Mordor recruits from the saga.
7.5 out of 10