300

Well it was a bit of a late night/early morning (ended up getting home from the midnight screening about 2:45am) but I finally got around to writing my review. In short: magnificent.

You have no doubt all heard about the political arguments going on about the film, and with the director (Zach Snyder who also did the Dawn of the Dead remake that didn’t suck ass much to my surprise) saying he intended no parallels having started film over two years ago, I won’t go into what I think he was trying to say. Remember this is the story of a battle some 2500 years old. Of course that battle was Western Civilization’s finest hour but the politics of that transcend any real comparison to political events today. I will leave it for you to go and watch for yourselves.

However, we all know gutless leftist wankers are going to hate it as it shows them up as the cowards they are. Still the best way it can be described is how the Libertas review said it:

Like Spartacus and Ben-Hur, 300 is about bravery, freedom, honor, and country. These are universal themes. But universal themes that will offend liberals because they’re not defended in a PC fashion. Liberals believe bravery is being brave enough to kiss despot hiney in the corrupt UN. Liberals believe freedom is porn in school libraries. Liberals believe honor is leaking national security secrets to the New York Times. Liberals believe ”country” is about everybody’s country but ours, so it’s okay to give mass murderers autographed basketballs and ask them to dance. The men in 300 believe they are good, their families are good, their country is good, and worth dying and fighting for.


Bingo. On to the film itself…

Much has been made of the choreography of the battle sequences, especially with the camera slowing down, speeding up, and panning around – and I will admit I had fears that it may be overused and come across as a cheap gimmick. Thankfully this is not the case. The few parts it is used in are brilliantly done and the decision to use it to focus on only one or two Spartans at a time doing their thing, using it to highlight the elite Spartans as it were, actually had me wishing the technique had been used more in those sequences.

Likewise death metal music is used in a similar way. Now you may be thinking “death metal in a historical epic?” Well, yes but it works as it is not so much death metal for the sake of death metal, but a death metal version of your more classical battle score. Think the banging of large battle drums when an army is on the march in any number of sword and sandal epics replaced with hard core guitar riffs. Again, it is used sparingly and to excellent effect.

I guess the other big sticking point for some is the historical license taken with many parts of the story. Some of it is justified given the highly stylistic, if not surrealistic, nature of the film. Ogres, freaks, and orcs all make an appearance and that all fits in perfectly well. Think of that as the “how”, but some were complaining about the “what” that is being told.

An example is the last stand of the Spartans. History tells that Leonidas fell early in the final stand, and that three times the Persians dragged his body away, and three times the Spartans fought with sheer will and determination and brought his body back to their fold. Now is that even more heroic than Leonidas being the last to fall in this one? Well yes, but as I said in my article about 300’s box office performance, this is based on Frank Miller, not Herodotus. And to those who don’t know the history of it, well it won’t make any difference.

And with a film version of Steven Pressfield’s excellent Gates of Fire in the works, as well as a rumoured remake of 1962’s The 300 Spartans, those of us who do know Herodotus may get the historical version we are after. My only hope for those is that the sacrifice of the Thespians is no longer glossed over, if ignored all together.

My final thoughts: stop surfing the web and get your arse down to the cinema.

Now I’m off to the gym to lift insane amounts of weights and then go find some leftists to kill… 300 should do quite nicely.

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