300

Review by Clare Bath

Every once in a while a movie comes along that justifies we, the collective film critics, have an important place in the world. 300 is that film. 

I can't save your life, but I can save 2 hours of it.

The good news is, it is only 117 minutes long - the bad news is that most of it is in self indulgent slow motion that stretches it to well over a week. Don't be lured in by the pretty posters and cunning commercials - it's a trap! This movie suffers a squeamish death of it's own self aggrandizement, complete with ridiculous generic faux "ancient talk" peppered with a few modernisms for flair and a score that makes Carmina Burana sound like a light salon song. No offense to Zack Snyder (Dawn of the Dead), but was anyone directing this? And based on the work of Frank Sin City Miller - honestly Frank - what happened? You’ve been so fussy before on not pushing the button on slipshod films based on your works… so why now? (I’m guessing the tasty executive producer credit sealed the deal?).

The story is a waffle about Spartan king Leonidas (a mostly shouting Gerard Butler) leading 300 (thus the title) of his best solders to their death in a senseless battle against the Persians. There was a really cool subplot about, oh wait a minute, no there wasn't. To it's credit, the script did make a couple of meager attempts at humor with some homophobic Spartan banter which, unfortunately, was entirely contrary to historical Spartan Pederasty - the assignment of an older male mentor/lover to each boy. Yup, it's true. Which might explain why the main antagonist, Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro), could have passed as RuPaul's sister had his voice not been digitally dropped an octave. By the way, the only guy who made any logical sense in the script happened to be a rapist.

OK, there were some nice things in there. Namely the visual pallet. It was put together with a sandy grain that seems cool for the first 5 minutes but soon after becomes apparent as the gimmick it is. The colors were nice as well but once again were overused to the point of ineffectiveness. The visual effects themselves were more interesting than the story they were burdened with telling and would probably be more appealing dissected in the bonus material of the DVD - if you must.

This movie was a wonderful experiment to see if every production trick, device, action montage, digital effect, erect nipple shot, and sound masturbation can make up for the lack of writing. And after a virtuosic display and excellent execution of the above-mentioned fluff, it seems the pen is still mightier than the sword.

Having said that - it has already set box office records across the states taking in well over $100 million in it's first few weeks. So obviously the movie fans and general public are finding something extremeley appealing.

2 out of 5

300
Australian release: 5th April, 2007
Cast: Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, Michael Fassbender, Vincent Regan, Dominic West
Director: Zack Snyder
Website: Click here.