Not nearly what it ought to be.

Rating: 5/10 (12 March 2007)

I had high hopes for the film 300. I really did. The previews showed scenes of cool, stylized violence with the twinge of a historical epic. The writer, Frank Miller, was fresh off his success with Sin City, showing what stylized violence and innovative visuals could do against a film noir story and background. Letting him go after a big budget epic with Gladiator overtones seemed like a sure thing, or at least a fun diversion for a warm Sunday night.
I was wrong. 300 turned out to be a deeply flawed film, and Miller is at least partly (perhaps mostly) to blame for it. On Miller's end, we are presented with a story of heroism and honor and freedom encapsulated in the struggle between 300 warriors from Sparta and the advancing hordes of the Persian army led by "god-king" Xerxes, bent on capturing and enslaving Sparta. It is based on the actual battle of Thermopylae between Sparta and Persia, but the film departs from the historical record in many notable ways. I personally won't begrudge Miller and director Zack Snyder for wanting to play fast and loose with history in the name of a more compelling film.
This is a good premise, but the film never really moves out of the premise. Lost in its own sense of portraying what a hero really is, the movie forgets to tell a compelling story or employ any strong narrative. Instead, it almost feels like a series of vignettes wherein the Spartans clash against one Persian attack or another, with brief flashes of the struggle at home between a corrupt senate and the noble queen. There is a slight sense of progression towards the end, but as a whole the narrative feels like it replays itself and thus, when the ending comes, the plot feels tired. Not unlike a Clint Eastwood film, 300 clings to a moral and proceeds to hammer that moral into its viewers with the subtlety of a crowbar.
Unfortunately, Miller also seems to have run dry in dialog and character development as well. What succeeded in Sin City is almost entirely absent in 300. Instead of ethically complicated characters making tough moral and utilitarian decisions, as was the case in Sin City, 300 tells you exactly what the characters are going to do and seems to imply that they only have one route to take. There is no ambiguity to their decisions, and so the warriors of Sparta come off as much more bland and uninspired than Dwight and Marv and Hartigan. The dialog and long-winded monologues don't help things either. Instead of a hip, insightful and fun narration, 300 gives us trite speeches about "freedom not being free," loud but empty chants of "Sparta!!," and contrived meetings where characters who are in all ways good spout clichés at characters who are in all ways bad.
Even with a weak story and characters, at least the film is fun to watch, right? Actually, it is on the whole something compelling to look at. Director Snyder, best known for a remake of Dawn of the Dead, does give the film a very distinct visual feel, opting to create Sparta and it's surroundings entirely from scratch instead of relying on location shots and the like. Although not as stylistically heavy-handed as Sin City, the film does have a vaguely artistic feel with washed-out colors in the background (for the most part, beautiful or compelling landscapes) contrasting with the red of Spartan cloaks and the gold of Spartan shields. Some of the battle sequences are fun to watch as well, but after a while I began to wonder if Snyder was just overly fond of slow-motion sequences or had no other directorial tricks to use (thus, some of the battles seemed like they were shot by a very amateur director). Unfortunately, style is not enough to carry the film through to the end.
300 is a film that should have been a great film. It aspires to be, and does it's damnedest conjure up epic films. But it is ultimately an empty film, pretty to look at but lacking any real core or resonance.