300
If you’re a big fan of history or more specifically historical accuracy I’ve got a movie you should avoid. I think the dead give away would probably be the giant Persian monsters. I’m not what you’d call a history buff, but I’m fairly certain Xerxes wasn’t a nine foot androgynous pin cushion and there weren’t as many deformed hunchback perverts running around ancient Greece as I’ve been lead to believe.
Based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel, 300 is based on one of my personal favorite stories out of human history, the Battle of Thermopylae. In 480 BC Persian king Xerxes had plans to expand his empire to include all of Greece. Sending a messenger, he warns King Leonidas and everyone else in Sparta that they can either yield to him or be crushed under his enormous army. What Xerxes didn’t plan on was that the Spartans spend their entire lives training in hopes of one day having the chance to fight a battle just like this one. Leonidas turns down the offer of submission and leads 300 of his men again the entire Persian army, knowing that they will not return.
It’s not so much that anyone in this film does a bad acting job, it’s just that there really isn’t a whole lot of acting going on. It appears the main requirement during the auditions was to have great abs. To their credit, they nailed that part of it. Outside of that really you just have to either stand around, be angry or kind of creepy. Having said that, I really did like Gerard Butler as King Leonidas. Of course that has more to do with the fact that Scottish people have good accents for yelling and this role really did consist of quite a bit of it.
Visually, this is one incredible film to look at. The actors had to shoot everything in front of a green screen, really forcing them to acting with nothing but the person in front of them. That coupled with the over saturation of everything just makes for a very unusual look, which for the most part makes the film. With the story being boiled down to its bare bones and the characters essentially being clichés and archetypes the look of 300 helps lend it a little more credence. There’s no way you could portray the Spartans as half naked warmongers and then have them facing of against giants and knife handed behemoths without it. On the down side, the method used to make this film can occasionally be a little distracting when its obvious that the entire Spartan army is really just the back of five guys and they are really walking anywhere. At certain points the green screen definitely hinders things and really points out that everything has been faked.
It’s not that this is a particularly bad film. I was entertained for the entire time, but after I had finished watching 300 I didn’t feel like I had actually seen anything. They put a lot of effort into making everything look cool but at the end if there’s no real story there to support the film is going to fall flat. It’s our first disposable summer spectacle. If you’re looking for a bloody film with disembodied limbs flying everywhere, check it out. Personally, after Frank Miller’s Sin City, I was a little disappointed. You’ll be entertained while in the theater, but you’ll be less so with subsequent viewings.
The Grade
- Story: C
- Acting: C
- Visuals: B
- Originality: B-
- Enjoyability: B-
- Overall: C+
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