Glorious and epic comic book adaptation.

Rating: 7/10 (23 March 2007)

From the makers of 'Sin City' comes Spartan battle epic 300, a lush extraordinary tale of the battle of Thermopylae. Based loosely on facts but with a liberal dash of fantasy thrown in for good measure, after all it is a comic book adaptation from the pen of Frank Miller; it is a tour de force. What this film lacks in substance it way makes up for in how it looks, the colours, the textures and the style. Gerard Butler is utterly convincing as king Leonidas leading his 300 super-warriors in to battle clad in nothing but sandals, blood red capes and leather thongs. The story is that he and his men held off a million of the Persian army, fact states about 200,000 but a million makes for a much better film. And it is in the films exaggerations that it shines, it never pretends to be exact or real, even the blood (and there is lots of it) flies around like its straight out of a computer game, disappearing before its even hit the ground. The action pieces use slow motion and a kind of bullet time to speed up and slow down the mighty soldiers actions and give every spear throw and sword swing real weight. Anyone moaning about accuracy doesn't get the whole premise that this is a movie there to entertain; if you want cold hard facts then may I point you in the way of the discovery channel. There are war rhinos, ogres with sword hands and a crazy eight-foot berserker all of which despite not actually being there are present here to full effect. There is a small storyline that runs through the film but really it is all about the action, piles of bodies, skies black with arrows, strange phantom elite ninja types and the muscle bound Spartans themselves, the last time I saw that many six packs was in the booze isle at Asda. The music adds to the atmosphere by being at times all high pitched like a dreamy choir before juxtaposing into heavy metal for some of the more rigorous fights. Sure its going to get comparisons to 'Gladiator' and 'Troy' but when you see the Persian fleet at sea its pure Wolfgang Peterson but it also comes across as a modern day epic, a 'Spartacus' or 'Ben Hur' for the video gamers and the matrix generation. It has it flaws and it has its brilliant moments that have your jaw literally on the floor. But in the end it's a bloodthirsty no-brainer that is a feast for the eyes and an exercise in what cinema is capable of with a little bit of imagination. Lots of the scenes, the final shot in particularly, are reminiscent of the kind of lavish oil paintings that hang in galleries around the world depicting these momentous battles. It is not a history lesson but nether the less it's a rip roaring ride through a war that built a legend. Far fetched and far outreaching anything else you'll see for a while it is well worth fighting to see this movie.