300 [2007]

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Editorial reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review
Like Sin City before it, 300 brings Frank Miller and Lynn Varley's graphic novel vividly to life. Gerard Butler (Beowulf and Grendel, The Phantom of the Opera) radiates pure power and charisma as Leonidas, the Grecian king who leads 300 of his fellow Spartans (including David Wenham of The Lord of the Rings, Michael Fassbender, and Andrew Pleavin) into a battle against the overwhelming force of Persian invaders. Their only hope is to neutralise the numerical advantage by confronting the Persians, led by King Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro), at the narrow strait of Thermopylae.

More engaging than Troy, the tepid and somewhat similar epic of ancient Greece, 300 is also comparable to Sin City in that the actors were shot on green screen, then added to digitally created backgrounds. The effort pays off in a strikingly stylised look and huge, sweeping battle scenes. However, it's not as to-the-letter faithful to Miller's source material as Sin City was. The plot is the same, and many of the book's images are represented just about perfectly. But some extra material has been added, including new villains (who would be considered "bosses" if this were a video game, and it often feels like one) and a political subplot involving new characters and a significantly expanded role for the Queen of Sparta (Lena Headey). While this subplot by director Zack Snyder (Dawn of the Dead) and his fellow co-writers does break up the violence, most fans would probably dismiss it as filler if it didn't involve the sexy Headey. Other viewers, of course, will be turned off by the waves of spurting blood, flying body parts, and surging testosterone. (The six-pack abs are also relentless, and the movie has more and less nudity--more female, less male--than the graphic novel.) Still, as a representation of Miller's work and as an ancient-themed action flick with a modern edge, 300 delivers. --David Horiuchi

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DVD Description
Based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, 300 takes over the screen like an invading horde. With all the gushing blood of a horror movie and the scope of a classic epic, the second film from Zack Snyder (who helmed the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead) is an impressive visual spectacle. In 300, Gerard Butler (PS I Love You) plays Leonidas, the king of ancient Sparta. The city is famous for its warrior philosophy and Leonidas won't kneel to the demands of Persia's King, Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro, Lost). Instead, Leonidas leads his 300-strong army against Xerxes's army of millions. Meanwhile, his wife (Lena Headey, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) campaigns in Sparta for the city to send reinforcements, as she butts heads with the treacherous Theron (Dominic West, The Wire).

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Synopsis
Based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, 300 takes over the screen like an invading horde. With all the gushing blood of a horror movie and the scope of a classic epic, the second film from Zack Snyder (who helmed the 2004 remake of "Dawn of the Dead") is an impressive visual spectacle. In 300, Gerard Butler ("The Phantom of the Opera") plays Leonidas, the king of ancient Sparta. The city is famous for its warrior philosophy and Leonidas won't kneel to the demands of Persia's King, Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro, "Lost"). Instead, Leonidas leads his 300-strong army against Xerxes's army of millions. Meanwhile, his wife (Lena Headey, "The Brothers Grimm") campaigns in Sparta for the city to send reinforcements, as she butts heads with the treacherous Theron (Dominic West, "The Wire").

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Customer reviews

review by: date: 2008-08-20 rating:
Only as a warning... NO DTS Soundtrack
I did not want to say much about the film or the DVD, because both are without a doubt great and dearly recommended, but the description contains one flaw, cause it claims the DVD would have the DTS-Soundtrack on it, which it doesn't. I ask for an update on the Features, but untill that comes through, this has to do.
Blocker

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review by: date: 2008-07-31 rating:
Slightly disappointed
I saw this film at the cinema and found it slightly disappointing. Seems if you are female then you'll love this movie for all the hunky men that are in it. However, I do admit to being a bit of a movie critic and the first let down was how much blue/green screen was used in this movie. Why they needed to pretty much do the whole movie like this I do not know?

Secondly, for all the fighting scenes are at first glance awesome, they do lack a lot of detail. Seems that movies these days to sneak in a 15 certificate, they speed and blur the action scenes which I find ruins it slightly.

Apart from that it still is a good movie but not as good as it could have been.

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review by: date: 2008-07-22 rating:
Silly, overblown and artificial but still oddly moving
'300' is one of those mainstream films that is better the second time you watch it, which is another way of saying that it's not all that good. We can expect really good, serious films to be tough going the first time round, because really good directors have a personal way of saying things that is sometimes difficult by virtue of being unfamiliar.

Zack Snyder, however, is not a really good director. He's a talented Hollywood director who lucked into a vivid retelling of a good story, in this case Frank Miller's passionate and visually striking but lurid and inaccurate version of the heroic-but-doomed defence of the pass of Thermopylae by a small Greek army against a massive Persian one.

The battle of Thermopylae has been called, with some justice, the most important battle in the history of what is sometimes called Western civilisation. Although the Greeks ultimately lost, their collective and determined self-sacrifice helped to boost the morale of the Greek side, with the result that the Persian empire didn't actually conquer Greece in 478BC but went home to lick its wounds - with the further result that Greek civilisation developed in the uniquely individual and ornery way that it did, giving us (among other things) the invention of tragic drama, history and philosophy, plus a lot of really good poetry. Thermopylae was one of the very few times in history when it was truly necessary for a small cadre of dedicated soldiers to defend the freedom that others enjoyed.

The film doesn't really work, though, because it relies almost entirely on the book, which is itself filtered through Frank Miller's rather manic Orientalism. The Persian king Xerxes, who was in real life a weak, ignorant and over-ambitious character with a desire to avenge his father's failures, and who was therefore not totally unlike the current US President, is here presented as a sleazily androgynous giant whose court is full of lots of same-sex sex. You would never know from this movie that the Spartans practised institutional pederasty; that all Spartan adolescent boys went through a period of being the lovers of older men. In the movie, King Leonidas (Gerard Butler, very good, gruff and apparently channelling Sean Connery) refers to his temporary Athenian allies as 'boy-lovers', which is pretty ironic seeing as he would have been one himself in real life.

Having said that, the performances are good. Lena Headey is especially fine as Queen Gorgo, one of the very few ancient Greek women about whom we have much evidence and who, by most accounts, was very much as we see her here - blunt, to the point, honourable, determined and courageous. The depiction of the battle itself is frankly wacky, with eight-feet-tall monsters standing in for the largely conscript Persian army, but the ultimate emotional significance of the stand at Thermopylae does come across, even if the film is wildly inaccurate in every detail except the dialogue (e.g. when challenged by the Persians to lay down arms, Leonidas really is supposed to have replied 'Come and get them.')

So it's a big fantasy, and if you really want to know what it was like at Thermopylae or how they came to be there in the first place, I suggest you read a good book on the subject. But the film, like Miller's graphic novel, does admirably capture what Thermopylae has to come to mean from almost as soon as it originally happened - heroic self-sacrifice in the name of a good cause. The Spartans themselves did not practice democracy, and indeed their whole society was built on the exploitation and enslavement of others. But if they hadn't stood at Thermopylae and made an example, Western history might have been very different. Benevolent despotism might have been the only political system we had ever heard of.

Also, there's some great hacking and slashing. It's not a major film, but it's fun. Just don't take it for anything like accuracy. And the CGI does get a bit annoying.

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review by: date: 2008-07-20 rating:
An impressive product
Epic based on a Frank Millar graphic novel set in ancient times telling the violent tale of 300 Spartan warriors who led by their king Leonidas (played by Gerard Butler) defend their Greek city-state Sparta against the might of the Persian empire and its emperor Xerxes (played by Lost's Rodrigo Santoro), who fancies himself a god and seeks to invade Sparta and make it a part of his empire. The driving point of this film is the battle of a few against the many, and heroism, courage and bravery in the face of impossible odds. An excellent film, with a good plot, impressive visuals, many strong personalities - not least of all Leonidas's wife, the queen of Sparta (played by Lena Headley) - and excellent fight scenes. The Spartan warriors are a formidable bunch, with lethal fighting skills which are put on full display and you will find yourself rooting for the Spartans and admiring their values. Although there is a slightly sentimental speech at the very end of the film this is still a very impressive product. Recommended.


review by: Webjunkie date: 2008-07-15 rating:
For WWF fans only
Aaaargh....this is without doubt one of the worst films I have ever seen. No-brain, digitally-enhanced morons with minimal similarity to the original 300 heroes spend their time exuding testosterone and shouting at each other, before rushing off to kill thousands of incompetent Persians in impossible ways with amusement-arcade-standard animation. American wrestling fans will drool and believe every word. This is seriously BAD.

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