**1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, Dominic West, and Rodrigo Santoro
Directed & written for the screen by Zach Snyder
2007
117 min R
“300” is simultaneously the best and worst of the recent Greco-Roman sword-and-sandal epics. The imagery is delightfully fake and soaked in sepia and orange tints, like a mad video game come to life. At one point a rider comes over a cliff in slow-motion and he looks like he’s a hundred feet tall and weighs a thousand tons.
But it’s also the worst of the lot: despite being based on “Sin City” maestro Frank Miller’s graphic novel, it brings nothing new to the table after “Gladiator” and “Troy.” It’s still just violence interspersed with actors laboring over tedious and insincere “messages” in a mishmash of vaguely Anglo-Celtic accents. It’s not any worse than those films, I guess, both of which I liked the one time I saw them. But enough.
And what message is that? I think “300” wants us to send more troops to Iraq. Someone actually says “Freedom isn’t free” in the course of the movie. Screenplays are supposed to end up on bumper stickers, not start there. An argument can be made that “300” is a delirious pro-war don’t-stop-with-Iraq fantasy, as our all-white beefcakes slaughter everything the Middle East hurls at them (and everything else the entire world has to offer, white and non-white).
Like President W, “300’s” Leonidas breaks the law to protect liberty, in defiance of Sparta’s religious elders. Some read Sparta’s anti-war high priests, cloistered from the “common people” in their mountaintop dome, as congress. I assumed they represented the Vatican’s opposition to invading Iraq. Everyone against the war is either a pervert, a coward, or a traitor.
But the reviewer at Slant Magazine threw up his hands, declaring that Leonidas is neither George W. nor Osama Bin Laden, and that “300” is as much a mash of contradictions as it is accents. Leonidas and his men scoff the Athenians as “boy-lovers” then march off to homoerotic battle in their underwear. Leonidas is a king but cares a lot about democracy. Leonidas spits on religion, then dies in a Christ pose. And so forth.
Still, it’s not the movie’s point that bothers me (it never is), it’s the tedium of it being spelled out. I admire the movie’s screaming excess and excessive screaming. I loved Frank Miller’s use of freaks in “Sin City” and love it again here. The mystic moutaintop freaks are the results of centuries of inbreeding. These are the first freaks in the film, and I love that no other freaks are given any explanation. Since we got an explanation the first time, we don’t need any more.
On an adolescent level I appreciated the “good kills,” but I’m getting to where I like violence to be violence, not to prove what a “bad-ass” someone is. All those people died, and we’re supposed to be impressed? Screw you.
It’s a shame “300” isn’t better than it is; the dialogue-light, NIN-powered preview brought tears to my eyes. Speaking of previews, there was a stunning shoe commercial set to Mozart’s “Requiem” before the feature. Lit and shadowed beautifully, a high school basketball player emerges from utter darkness to rob a competitor of the ball and make a game-winning slam dunk in the final seconds. The motion is so slow that three seconds are dragged to an infinity.
The defeated player is scorned by his fans and teammates. But the moment of true beauty is that the game-winning player is also alone as he towers powerfully in the middle of the court. The importance of a high school game is comically exaggerated until it deserves bellows, yet the commercial’s fearsome beauty gets adolescence just right. Anyway, both the commercial and the “300” trailer succeed at what the movie itself only gets half-right.
Finished Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007
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