300
Happy March,
I'm sitting here with my mug of beer - yes getting ready early to celebrate my half Irish side - ready and raring' to write my first review of the season! It's been a quite the Winter - writing and researching my horror feature, playing Mall Madness with my girls and - oh yeah - juggling a new job. The new job is okay...it pays the mortgage....barely...but it does allow me to, ahem, work on the horror feature!
And see movies!
The latest of them being a Priest's wet dream about young boys showing leg and men with shaved chests, unbelievable (I wonder if they were CGI?) abs, leather loin cloths and capes...
Any of you making Superman jokes to me at this point, kiss my ass!
Yes I saw the highly anticipated 300 yesterday. And I liked it...for the most part.
For the last three years, we have seen with great success, an intriguing action movie released in March - last year it was V For Vendetta, Sin City the year before and Constantine before that. All have met with great box office openings. By far, the favorite for me was Sin City. With it's CGI backgrounds, Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis and Brittany Murphy (yeah I liked Jessica Alba, but I have a Brittany action figure) Frank Miller's Sin City was by far my favorite.
So I was definitely looking forward to 300.
In case you don't know, 300 is Frank Miller's favorite graphic novel that he released in the early 90s. He had been obsessed with The Battle of Thermopylae since he was a kid. So when he was old enough, somewhere in between The Return of the Dark Knight and A Dame to Kill For, FM released 300.
300 is the story of Spartan King Leonidas, and his reaction to the threat of takeover by the Persian Empire. Committed to keeping Greece (and of course Sparta) a free land, he vows to fight off King Xerxes (who suffers from a god complex). Unable to lead his army, due to political reasons (damn corrupt politicians), Leonidas takes 300 of his finest men, and 700 Thespians, to head off the Persians at a narrow pass called Thermopylae (duh). The movie follows the historic three day stand the Spartans made against the Persians. The fierce resistance of the Spartans led eventually gave Athens the time it needed to win a huge naval war over the Persian Navy.
Apparently, former commercial director and Dawn of the Dead remake director, Zach Snyder fell in love with the story and together with producer Gianni Nunnari battled the execs at Warner Brothers to make a faithful adaptation of 300.
Did they succeed?
Yes and no.
300 works on a lot of levels. The visuals are stunning...some of the best you will see this year. And for all the fighting that happens with similar looking characters, you never lose track of who is who. And they went balls out with the fighting. A lot of times when you have sword fighting in movies, the producers pussy out in showing the full extent of the damage a sword can do.
Not here. After its one hour and fifty-seven minute running time, you will have no doubt about (ooh rhymed) about the kind of damage a sword can inflict.
Where 300 doesn't work for me is on the character level. And for the teen fanboys it's targeted at, I don't know that 300 has to go any further than that. Gerard Butler absolutely commands the screen as King Leonidas. He comes off as the powerful King he's supposed to be. And Lena Headey is quite hot as his Queen Gorgo. But Rodrigo Santoro as Xerxes, leader of the huge and monstrous Persian army, came off as one dimensional to me. Except for wanting to conquer all lands I had no idea what was driving Xerxes. Overall, he came off as cartoonish...though my gay friends will absolutely love him.
I won't spoil the big loss at 75 minutes in, but the death came off flat (and predictable) to me because once again, the performances were very superficial. I guess these days I want some character development with my action. God I hope I'm not maturing!
But for the most part, the fights are spectacular and never ending and there is T&A God bless the Greeks! (but now that I think about it, mostly Man Ass, urgh).
But without the character development, 300 comes off as a recruiting film for the Spartan Army circa 480 BC - to live and die for honor and freedom! David Wenham as Leonidas friend and aide, Dilios has the best line in the movie after he loses an eye.
"It is all right, for the Gods have seen fit to have given me a spare."
Three Ball Point Pens