Review: 300

Director : Zack Snyder
Main Cast : Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, David Wenham

I’ve read some nerds on the net ranting about how 300 exaggerated things and did not depict what really happened 2500 years ago. Thing is, I DON’T CARE. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a fictionalized tale based on a comic, and I treat 300 no different than Harry Potter or Lord Of The Rings.



So anyway, 300 is yet another Frank Miller comic/graphic that has been converted to the big screen. Really loved and enjoyed the last two, Batman Begins and Sin City. And like Sin City, 300 was filmed entirely against green screen, with the background in every scene added digitally. Also like Sin City, the director went out to replicate the look and feel of the source material. It was a real visual treat, with scorched out bronze/brown the main theme - the contrast slider gleefully pushed all the way to the right - and dabs of bright crimson for the blood.

And man, was there a lot of blood. This is violence at its glorious, arty-farty best. Other films may rush through the really bloody scenes, leaving the worst to our imagination. Not 300 though. Every single thrust of the spear, every single limb cut off, is shown in slow-motion. It really is a film for the boys, a genre action film where instead of having one-man-armies such as Rambo or Conan, here we have a whole troop of them, with more six-packs on show than in your local 7-Eleven. So much so that the sub-plot involving the Queen and the Senate back home proved an annoying distraction, something that the director wrongly decided would give the film more character.

So is the film any good then? Well, it’s got great visuals and probably the best sword-and-sandal battle scenes ever – some of the specific scenes would undoubtedly be parodied in the likes of Shrek for years to come. However, I really feel sorry to say that it’s all just a bit too much style over substance. Not enough time was spent developing the main characters, to the point that we didn’t really care when they all eventually perished. And it all felt a little bit too similar to Gladiator, especially the scenes in the barley field with the haunting soundtrack. Gerald Butler, last seen singing his lungs out in Phantom Of The Opera, did a passable if hysteric impression of Russell Crowe. But then, 300 never set out to be a critically acclaimed film. It set out to thrill, to excite, to entertain. And entertain it certainly did. Just do me a favour and catch it in its full glory at the cinema while you can, rather than a bad copy downloaded off the internet on your laptop.