CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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Review of 300

Friday, April 06, 2007

this entry brought to you by beastie boys, "paul revere"





As I mentioned in my Sin City review, I've been very familiar with Frank Miller's work since the early 90's, but wasn't really a die-hard fan. After seeing 300, the second movie based on his original property, I came out saying "What's with Frank Miller and manliness?" I had called Sin City a celebration of manliness in my review-- 300, Frank Miller's version of the legendary Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C, where King Leonidas and 300 of his fiercest, most highly trained warriors kept Persia's army of thousands at for three days, is more like an orgiastic explosion of manliness. The Spartans are nearly naked through the whole movie, just loin cloths, brilliant crimson capes, and washboard abs, while gritting their teeth, glaring with furrowed brows, and shouting chest-beating war cries. The bad guy, the self-proclaimed God-King Xerxes, is himself an affront to manliness-- approximately 12 feet tall, yes, but multi-pierced, eye-shadowed, with an effeminate lilt in his voice and flit of the wrist. Nearly every woman with a speaking role is seen nude at some point. And there is lots, and lots, and lots of visceral, heart-pounding, fist pumping graphic violence.

The gorgeous, fluid battle scenes are like ballet with blood misting through the air and heads chopped off at every glance. Director Zack Snider decided to use the now-familiar Matrix inspired "bullet time" effect, where the camera pans smoothly around its subject and slows and speeds up to show the battle in its glory, and while initially it comes off as derivative, after a while you begin to realize the effect is used better here than it was even in The Matrix where it became overused and superfluous. Here it is used as the next step in war movies; rather than the confusion of jump cutting from points of interest as seen in every other sword-and-shield war movie, the camera sticks with one subject and pans around, slowing and speeding up to show you every aspect of what's going on without anything obstructing your view of the bloody glory. The whole thing is brought to you in the Sin City way of actors performing against a green-screen and essentially everything beyond the humans is computer generated, creating a look that is distinctly cinematic, yet at all times resembles its comic book origins. The movie is gorgeous and its battles breath-taking (and it is impossible not to mention the incredible dream-like sequence where a beautiful red-haired prophet is asked to see into the future); without a doubt, along with Lord of the Rings, it is one of the most unique looking war movies ever to grace the big screen, which is really something considering the deluge of movies like this following LOTR. Along the way we are periodically taken back to Sparta, where King Leonidas's wife, Queen Gorgo, desperately seeks the support of Congress to go to war and help her King's miniscule group of dedicated fighters defend Sparta from Xerxes' army of hundreds of thousands, which becomes a touch predictable but breaks up the action well.

Despite the fact that 300 is essentially all about the immensely entertaining battle scenes, it has a surprising amount of heart. No, in terms of depth, it's nowhere near something like Pete Jackson's epics, but the recurring theme of Leonidas' undying respect and love of his Queen takes it comfortably-- and surprisingly-- above turn-your-brain-off popcorn movie. Like Sin City, it revels in the fact that it couldn't be described as anything but a guy movie. And like Sin City, it manages to be completely engrossing because of it.
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with love from CRS @ 11:19 AM 

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