Movie Review

“300” directed by Zach Snyder

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

You have never experienced anything like it. You will never again experience anything like it. If you have yet to go see “300” your life is incomplete.

I’m really not exaggerating (you might think so, but honest-to-goodness, I’m not). “300” is that good. It isn’t so much the acting, or the directing, or the fact that the entire movie is full of blood, gore and general mayhem. It’s the fact that this movie is so much a spectacle, that even if you don’t enjoy extended battle sequences, you will at least appreciate the sheer scale on which they are occurring.

“300” is based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller (of “Sin City” fame), and depicts the epic Battle of Thermopylae, where King Leonidas (played with immense gravitas by Gerard Butler), 300 Spartan soldiers, and 700 Thespians (citizens of the Greek city-state Thespiae, not actors) held the narrow pass at Thermopylae, fighting against an army consisting of anywhere between 800,000 and 5,293,200 Persian soldiers, depending on the account you choose to believe.

There’s not a great deal of plot development to the movie; it’s basically one glorious last stand that puts live actors into settings seemingly ripped straight from the pages of Miller’s graphic novel, thanks to some stunning CGI effects. What do I mean by glorious last stand? I mean Spartan soldiers running swords through one Persian while smashing the side of their shield into the face of another. I mean Spartan soldiers fighting back to back, taking out 30 or so Persian soldiers before even stopping to take a break. I mean decapitations where you watch the heads fall in slow motion.

Of course, even though we identify with the courage of the Spartans, as per the Battle of Thermopylae, they must die. I could tell you how they died, but it’s all too dramatic for me to spoil it for you. So I’ll leave it by saying that it involves a fateful betrayal. One twist not in the graphic novel is the story of King Leonidas’ wife — Queen Gordo (played by Lena Headey) — who takes her lovely self and not so lovely name to the Spartan council to convince them to declare war on the Persians and send more soldiers to help her husband’s cause.

If you did not pick up on what I’ve said throughout the review, the moral of the story is: See “300.”

By Barry Langer | VOX Staff