| Slimy Yet Satisfying |
300Directed by Zack SnyderStarring Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, David Wenham, Rodrigo Santoro 300themovie.warnerbros.com   It all starts with throwing a Persian down a well  Gerard Butler (left) as the very manly King Leonidas and Rodrigo Santoro as the effiminate Xerxes  Gerard Butler and Vincent Regan heading into battle with only their pecs to protect them.  The Persians use orcs in their army. I don't know if I've ever seen a movie that was more of an homage, nay, a love letter, to all such manly urges. There is more screaming, stabbing, blood spattering, and all around self-congratulation for being the butchiest, most epic guys on the block in "300" than perhaps any movie to date. Somehow, at the same time, it also manages to be a visual work of art of the kind rarely seen in mainstream American cinema. The plot is impressively simple. The film begins when a black Persian emissary comes to tell the rippling King Leonidas of Sparta (Gerard Butler) that it would be wise to submit to the Persian empire. Instead, Leonidas throws the Persian down the well , and then, with his beefiest, most hairless soldiers, goes against the wishes of corrupt Spartan priests and senators, to fight the hordes of Persia. They then fight for the next 90 minutes. That's it. That's the whole plot. Now, the visuals are impressive, incredible even. Having such gorgeous visuals help distract from the fact that the movie is ostensibly a two-hour fight scene. It's very clear that second-time director Zack Snyder ("Dawn of the Dead") and his associates put a lot of thought into each and every frame of the movie, which, to a large degree, is modeled on frames from Frank Miller's comic version of "300." Snyder jammed in a refreshing subplot about Leonidas's Queen Gorgo (Lena Headley) gathering political support for her husband, and he made a particularly wise decision to deviate from Miller's original text by telling the story from the point of view of Dilios (David Wenham), a Spartan warrior, rather than by an omniscient narrator. The story benefits from being told from the point of view of a Spartan, as the film then has an excuse for making the glistening, manly Spartans look awesome and the Persians look like monsters; it's also excuses some damn ridiculous fantasy elements as well. One might find themselves wondering how this orc-like Persian fellow survived having a knife lodged several inches into his eye, or how that large blobby guy managed to shape his humeruses into sword-like appendages. It's hard to tell whether the film was good because of Butler's performance or despite it [I'm biased; I may never forgive anyone associated with 2005's "The Phantom of the Opera"]. Try as he might, he just couldn't keep that wisp of a Scottish brogue at bay throughout the film. Other than that, though, he accomplished exactly what was needed of him: scream, flex, stab, fix things, cook outdoors and be a man. On the other hand, there is Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro), an eight-foot-tall experiment in creative piercings and enviable make-up who, when opening his mouth, one would expect to sound like Nathan Lane, but is more akin vocally to James Earl Jones. He and his minions are quite fey and petty, in stark contrast to the uber-masculine Spartans. Given the fantabulous portrayal of both the Spartans and the Persians, this is not a history lesson. The Spartans make the odd decision to go into battle with only their super-buff bodies (no, they didn't fight naked, they wrestled naked, there's a difference). This kind of anachronism along with the stylization may jar some perceptive viewers. (Why are the Spartans going to dine in Hell? Wouldn't it be Hades? Where the hell did the Persians get rhinos? And how did the Spartans make such sheer fabric for the Oracle?) Does the film hit a lot of iffy buttons? Yes. Is it as racist as you might have heard ? Well, yes. And yes it does hit some very sensitive buttons, if one takes offense to the concepts touched on in this film by viewing them purely through politically correct sensibilities. There are many looking for a higher concept here that suggests some sort of devious political message about the world, but these people are missing the point. It's a movie about men killing other men, and having an awesome manly time in the process. Perhaps the most satisfying concept that goes into this movie is the fact that the Spartans, one way or another, cannot lose. If they have victory, victory is great, and if they are defeated, then they died gloriously, having taken down about 20,000 Persians in the process. Sit back and enjoy the blood and the manly, meaty pecs. And try not to kick anyone down any wells.
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