300

If you don't want spoilers, don't read this blog. :)

I saw this movie twice just to feel like I formed an adequate critical opinion of it, outside of the hype. I'll admit, the first time I saw it I didn't like it very much. The more I described it to friends and family I didn't have many bad things to say about it, but still had a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe it was the fact that I saw it late at night after a long day's work, big dinner and two Gin and tonics. In any case, by the time the final battle sequence started I was tapping the armrest and heaving big sighs waiting for the credits to roll.

I determined that I had to see 300 again in completely different circumstances to see if that might change my opinion. So the following Saturday I went to an afternoon showing by myself. First off, let me that there were no less that four children under the age of 10 around me with their families. Now, I am far, far, far from prudish, but seriously, what is wrong with these parents that they would bring young children to see this film? From the writhing Oracle covered in a sheen of sweat on her naked body to sex scene with King Leonidas taking his queen doggystyle to the massive amounts of dismemberments and decapitations, this is not a movie for young children. Sorry, but it's true.

I'm a fan of Frank Miller's work and own pretty much everything he's written for comics, so I read the original series of 300 comics. I remember at the time that I thought the art and coloring were beautiful, but I wasn't overly fond of the story. The movie did an excellent job of capturing Miller's artwork on the screen and even better did justice to Lynn Varley's palette from the source material.

I have to go with the majority in agreeing that the visual effects were just about the best I've seen. The green screen effects were almost seamless with the actors and sets. Almost. There are a couple of scenes that the compositing is obvious, but they are so few and so minor if you aren't looking very closely, you wouldn't notice.

I wish the makeup effects were up to the same level. While they did capture Miller's character designs from the comics near perfectly, to me they looked blatantly like rubber prosthesis. This s not something I would really hold against the filmmakers; I was caught up enough in the story to suspend disbelief for the sake of the story. I was only mildly let down.

Overall, I felt 300 was well-acted, but truth to tell, it's not a script that is filled with much emotional depth. Like much of his work, including the noir Sin City books and movie, Miller's writing is crisp and staccato. He writes manly scripts for manly men. This leads me to the one line in the script that I cannot for the life of me get over.

The story goes that Frank Miller spent years researching the Spartans and the battle at the Hot Gates in preparation for writing and drawing 300. I guess that's why it gets to me that in the scene where he is parlaying with the messenger from the Persians, King Leonidas refers to the other Greeks dismissively as "Philosophers and boy-lovers."

I know that I'm the only one I've spoken to that this line bothers, but I just can't get over it. It's such a blatant revisionist line put in there just to support the supposition that the Spartans are real men. They were flagrant pederasts. You could easily have taken out that comment and have Leonidas refer to the other Greeks as philosophers and farmers or some other non-militaristic profession. He says basically the same thing when his troop encounters the Athenians during the march to the coast. Aside from being an unnecessarily offensive line, it's an outright lie about Spartan society. It's a minor thing, but it bugs me.

When the movie opens and we hear the voice over my first thought was, "Oh no…" I'm not a fan of the voice over. Usually they are not done well and are generally used to cover up gaps in the narrative that should have been evident in the film if it was well-made. In this case, however, I thought they did an excellent job bringing it back to the storyteller addressing the Spartan troop. It managed to get a lot of exposition out of the way and while at the same time feeling like an organic part of the movie.

All that being said, what I feel the movie suffers from is an emphasis of style over substance that at times threatens to overwhelm the film. Zach Snyder seems to have fallen in love with altering the film speed. It's like the abuse of the crash zoom in Ghost Rider.

If you took out all of the slo-mo sequences in this film, maybe it would only run 60 minutes. When used effectively, slo-mo can emphasize the emotional underpinning of a scene. There were moments when Snyder used this technique masterfully. In particular, there is one of the last scenes in the film wherein the storyteller stands in the field of wheat and informs the queen of the death of King Leonidas. It's a beautiful scene as the soldier turns and walks away and the queen looks down at her son. It captures so many emotions at once; her sorrow, a feeling of hope as she looks on the boy, melancholy of seeing her husband reflected in their son, the sense of duty as the soldier turn, his mission done, to return to his troops.

Now contrast this with an earlier scene when the queen is following her on through the marketplace. After he turns to run away, the scenes kicks in to slow motion as she passes through a series of blankets hung out to dry, emerging to find the older senator waiting for her at the fountain. There is reason for this scene to be slowed. That is not the only scene that suffers from this abuse, but certainly, to me, the most egregious. Snyder falls on this film-making trope far too often and I think the film suffers for it.

Then there is the stylistic choice to frame all of the action with running the film at half n speed, then jumping to one and a half speed, then back to half speed. This is effective once or twice, specifically when King Leonidas kicks the Persian messenger down the well and in the first battle sequence when the Spartans break out of their shell and charge into battle. Once again, though, Snyder overuses the technique to the point that, although beautifully choreographed and rendered, the fight scenes become tedious.

There is one specific scene that I think should be re-cut to make it more effective. In the final confrontation with Xerxes, the voice over kicks in and describes him dropping his shield, then his helm and as we see King Leonidas doing exactly that. Then we are treated to a glimpse into his head with a montage of images of Sparta, his soldiers, his queen, all the things that help him make his decision to throw the spear at Xerxes. This is an obvious call back to the messenger scene at the beginning of the film which has the same kind of montage preceding his decision to kill the messenger and defy the invading Persians. Then he announces the attack and hurls his spear, wounding Xerxes. The narration cuts back in to explain that he dropped his shield and helm to help his throw.

The problem with this scene is that the gap between the first voiceover and then the payoff is too long. If the montage was moved in front of the king dropping his shield and helm, the audience would be lead to believe that rather than make the same decision he had at the beginning of the film, he had decided finally to submit. Then the call for attack, the throw and the narration would have more impact because the audience would be completely duped into thinking the opposite.

Okay, so aside from my rant about the audience, here's what I thought of 300. It's okay. Not the best film I've seen, but not close to a bad film. Zach Snyder did a good job, but I think he still reflects too much of his music video roots by depending on camera effects to fabricate emotion. Would I own the DVD? Yes, absolutely.