Sunday, 6 May 2007

300 (2007)

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Greek epics have never really appealed to me. They always remind me of those types of movies that would be on TV in background on a dull sunday afternoon. Having never seen gladiator, Troy or Kingdom of Heaven, i am working on a sort of stereotype i had in my mind going in. Though i am a fan of battle movies and huge fight scenes, because of the massive sets and depth of detail, but i just hadn't seen enough of the genre. However, having seen the trailer for 300, i was attracted to it due to the more sci-fi element (mutants) with almost lord of the rings feel. So, the marketing worked on Me.

300 is the story of warriors, The Spartan, against an army of well over 100,000 members of persian army. Our almost proppian hero in this case is King Leonidas, who fights for sparton army. We see him as a child being trainned and follow him to adulthood where he has since has a wife and son who is trainning now. Leonidas declares war on parsians, mainly due to pride, and goes back on the ruling council and acting government at the time in doing so.

directed by Zack Snyder and based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller who is also the brains behind Sin city. Which brings me to my first point, The visuals. Sin city was praised for staying loyal to the style of the original novel and having looked at some screens in research, 300 also keeps to the style. The gold tones, bold reds and dramatic light effects all feature. I think it is important to stay loyal if your making a comic book movie and not to sell out to industry pressure , to comprimise the artists original vision, just dumb it down and make more money.

One first things that struck me was the narration which at first i wasn't keen on, but it eventually won me over. It seemed at times it was merely the voice of captions in the comic or just narrating actions. "the sparton raised his sheild" it almost had a feel of a book being read to you, which takes time to get used to, but i feel in end it gave the film some extra edge. The violence is interesting in this movie. it's not realistic, it's more a hyberbolic violence (for exanple : Kill Bill) than maybe you'd find in a war movie. However, looking at the screens from novels its just following the violence depicted in it. The fights were gripping, and really well excuted, though it was done in stages, it was like, fight, rest, fight.. so on. i guess this is realistic as you wouldn't go in spears blazin' but at times made it drag a little. Acting was slightly on dodgy side, but pretty good. some cheesy moments (the apple? the head flying? the guy falling and camera follwing him?) but these were still entertaining. Another point i liked were the level of interesting characters, the god of persian army, the mutant warriors, all very iconic looking. This other character i wished they had used more was this fat mutant guy with a skin blade arm thing, was was ace.

Overall, escapism, alot of style, great battle scenes, drags a little and bit cheesy at times, but i really enjoyed it and it was one of those "wow that was cool" type action/epic movie. I recommend you see it if you liked lord of the rings too.

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