During some anonymous moment in 300 I had a moment of self-realization. I did not care about, nor was able to relate to any
character in the film, nor their motives, their beliefs, or their actions. I recall nary a line of dialogue and outside of
King Leonidas who is played by Gerard Butler (The Phantom of the Opera) everyone seemed to be a blur of faces, existing only
for valor and bloodlust. No wonder Butler is the only familiar face to litter the film’s cast, 300 seems to have no
characters, only legends; no dialogue, only speeches, which are not spoken but delivered. Alas 300 is not even a film at all,
but a collection of artistic portraits strung together in a collage of spectacular action, much like a graphic novel (the
source from which 300 originates). Unfortunately its plot also registers the same dimensions as a graphic novel; two of them
to be exact. 300 is flat.
But now I’ve gone and made 300 sound like a bad movie and I must apologize, because if the plot is flat, that
which holds it up is anything but. The film tells the tale of Leonidas, king of Sparta. In the opening scene a Persian messenger shows up
at the gates of Sparta, warrior skulls in hand, asking the
King to bow to Xerxes, a man who believes himself a god. Insulted and unwilling to cooperate, Leonidas kicks the messenger
down a well and kills his men.
Predicting the obvious, Leonidas climbs a tall mountain at night in order to ask a bunch of men who look like Jawas
with leprosy and an oracle if he may have permission to go to war with Xerces. Why these men rule over Sparta and needded to be consulted has become dislodged in my thinking, as the narrator seems
to spend more time underlining what vile pigs they are, then their actual function.
After being denied permission by the oracle, Leonidas, fearing the eradication of Sparta by Xerxes, gathers up three hundred
of his best men and marches off to war anyways. The three hundred men of course look like as though they have been plucked
from a male testosterone fantasy, each with chiseled abs and pulsing appendages. Not much imagination will be needed for the
production of 300 action figures.
The movie also makes constant note of what great warriors the Spartan
people are. After meeting up with a fellow army, they are surprised by Leonidas’ audacity in going to battle against
Xerxes’ supposed millions with only three hundred men. “What do you do?” Leonidas asks some of the fellow
soldiers. They reply with common jobs such as carpenter. When Leonidas then asks his men what they do, they all spout off
a male testosterone chant in unison. “You see,” Leonidas remarks. “I’ve brought more men than you.”
I guess no one ever accused a Greek of modesty.
300 was adapted from a graphic novel created by Frank Miller who also created the Sin City graphic novels, and like
the brilliant filmic adaptation of Sin City, 300 was also filmed against a green screen, the locales and action made up mostly
of wall to wall digital effects and CGI, which effortlessly mirror Miller’s drawings. Also like Sin City, 300 is a visual work of art. It presents
scenes of immense visual beauty and uses its special effects not as a crutch, but a way to enhance the epic quality of the
plentiful battle sequences, which would be redundant otherwise. Some films hang special effects loosely from the screen as
if they speak for themselves. Here director Zack Snyder uses them to inject a monotonous screenplay with life and energy.
The visuals are so exciting in fact, that I’m hard pressed to imagine how anyone could enjoy reading the 300 books.
However, to place Sin City in relation
to 300 is to see the difference between action and motion. 300 hasn’t the complexity nor the intrigue of Sin City. It jumps
out of the gates with guns a blazing: the action and violence of the battle against Xerxes begins almost instantaneously,
and the only time the film stops for breath is when it intercuts scenes of Queen Gorgo back is Sparta, which are rendered banal and uninspired by ham-fisted dialogue and shallow characterization.
Whereas Sin City
was exciting and perverse, presenting interesting, well-defined characters in an ultra-stylized post-modern nod of the hat
to film noir, 300 is all spectacle. The canvases may be painted with beautifully striking images, executed with care and expert
craftsmanship, but there is nothing underneath them; nothing to care about, historically or otherwise, except the excitement
of the pulsating action. To be sure, 300 is gloriously epic, gloriously pretentious, and gloriously violent. It has no redeeming
qualities outside of the moment in which it exists purely for the purposes of entertainment; but oh what entertainment it
is.
My Rating: ****
