Beautiful and savage

Rating: Null/10 (27 March 2007)

The battle of Thermopylae was one of the most significant of the ancient world, giving definition to the notion of Greek strength. It was a tale that was retold to emphasise the bravery of the 300 Spartan warriors. The film does the job of retelling the battle beautifully, and conveying its importance.
Each shot is beautiful and watching the film is like looking at a succession of film posters. The battle scenes were gruesomely beautiful, but more importantly very well edited, so that the narrative of the battle was easy to follow.
The film clearly owes a lot to recent cinema milestones, the use of the rhino and elephants and the appearance of the Persians, came straight from Lord of the Rings, and the slow motion shots follow clearly from The Matrix.
The film was also very funny at moments, where it intended to be. I wasn't sure why there were subtitles - perhaps people felt that the English accents would be hard to understand, but I thought everyone enunciated very well.
The film had the unremitting ferocity of The Passion of the Christ, and did not set out to question the morality of the protagonists, but such concerns are probably best left to documentary makers. 300 has dramatic impact and stunning imagery, it deserves to be counted as a masterpiece of film-making.