Review: Merging cutting-edge cinematic razzle dazzle with resonant themes of honour, courage and sacrifice, 300 builds into a visually thrilling and viscerally satisfying film.
Based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller (Sin City), 300 reworks the real-life legendary tale of the Battle of Thermopylae, in which a battalion of 300 elite Spartan soldiers heroically hold the line to protect ancient Greece from the invading Persian hordes. The story focuses on the Spartan King Leonidas (Gerard Butler), who must not only lead his small cadre of troops--each one raised since childhood into a razor-sharp, battle-relishing warrior into a battle they are unlikely to survive, but he must also fight for the fate of Greece and its democratic ideals.
As the bizarre, seemingly endless marauding legions of the tyrant Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) descend upon the Hot Gates - a narrow passageway into Greece that Leonidas' miniscule band can most ably defend; the soldiers take up arms without the usual post-modern anti-war hand-wringing that most war epics indulge in. These soldiers are both bred for battle and fighting a good fight and the film focuses squarely on the highly charged action.
Meanwhile, in a new plotline created specifically for the movie, his equally noble and faithful queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) takes up arms in a more symbolic way as she also tries to keep democracy alive by taking on the political warlords of Sparta to secure relief for her husband's troops.
Butler has become a familiar and welcome on-screen presence in such films as The Phantom of the Opera and Reign of Fire, but there has been little on his mainstream movie resume to suggest the kind of bravura fire he brings to the role of Leonidas. This is the stuff of an actor announcing himself to the audience in a major way, akin to Daniel Craig's star-making turn as James Bond. In a big, bold performance that could have gone awry in any number of ways, Butler perfectly captures the king's bravado, bombast, cunning, compassion and passion. Headey is his ideal match, imbuing the queen with more steel and nobility in a handful of scenes than most actresses can summon in entire films. Fans of Lost and Brazilian cinema will be hard-pressed to even recognize Santoro, whose earnest, pretty handsomeness is radically transformed into Xerxes' exotic, borderline freakish form, personifying a terrifying yet seductive force of corruption across the earth.
And don't forget to add in the most impressive array of rock-hard abs on cinematic display since, well, ever.
Even bolstered by canny casting choices and their washboard stomachs, helmer Zack Snyder (Dawn of the Dead) is the true, undisputable star of 300, establishing himself firmly as a director whose work demands to be watched. With a kinetic sensibility akin to Quentin Tarantino and John Woo and using CGI technology to its utmost effects, both subtle and dynamic, Snyder creates a compelling, fully formed world that the audience is eager to explore. Snyder doesn't literally match Miller's signature artwork as meticulously as director Robert Rodriguez did with Sin City. Instead, Snyder captures Miller's essence, be it raw brutality, majestic size and scope, the exotic and otherworldly, carnal physicality or hideous deformity--even seemingly antiquated and potentially off-putting techniques like the repeated use of slow-motion are put to fresh effect, making every blow and cut seem crucial. Yet even in the visual glorification of some of the most bloody and violent conflicts ever put to film, Snyder infuses the tale - which ultimately is one big, glorious testosterone-soaked fight sequence - with the sense of honour and sacrifice which characterises the most noble of war efforts.
Yes, war can be hell, but this is a case where some like it hot.
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