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ASIN : B000VUVG3E
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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
Customer Reviews
A Spartan propaganda piece, excellently told (2008-07-08)  300 is one of the most critically divisive movies of recent years, with Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes both giving it a score in the 50-60 range, indicating a near-equal divide between those who love and hate it. It's understandable. On a surface reading, this movie is vapid, stupid, ludicrously over-the-top and even less historically accurate that other recent liberty-taking films such as Gladiator and U-571. However, 300 may also be the most textually-misread film of our times. In fact, the movie is an excellently-staged piece of propaganda. Imagine if Joseph Goebbels had travelled back in time with a modern CGI team and had been paid by the Spartans to tell the world how awesome their soldiers were (frankly, that sounds like a great idea for a film in itself), and you'd end up with a movie like this. Seen in that light, 300 becomes a great deal more intriguing.The movie is based on Frank Miller's graphic novel, The 300, and opens in 480 BC. Ten years earlier, the Greek armies had defeated the invading Persians under Darius at Marathon, but now his son Xerxes has returned with a vast army. The Greek city-states are preparing to resist, but everything rests on Sparta, the most formidable of the Greek cities. Unfortunately, the Ephors, the priests of Sparta, are insisting that the Spartans celebrate the feast of the Carneia, during which time Spartans cannot go to war. King Leonidas disobeys and takes a small force of 300 men north, joining up with some additional Greek troops along the way. Leonidas' plan is to force the Persians to meet the Greeks at the Hot Gates (Thermopylae, a narrow pass only a few dozen feet wide between the mountains and the sea) where the Persians' vastly superior numbers (120,000+ ) will not avail them. Whilst the Spartans hold off the Persian advance for three days of almost non-stop combat (fighting the Persian Immortals, gunpowder-throwing troops and war-rhinos and elephants, presumably from Persia's territories in Africa or India), Leonidas' wife Gorgo attempts to persuade the Spartan council to defy the Ephors and send the remainder of Sparta's 10,000-strong army to aid Leonidas.The narrative is somewhat simple and straightforward, with frantic, balletic combat sequences at the Hot Gates mixed in with political maneuverings back in Sparta. These are not particularly complex, but do increase dramatic tension in the storyline. During the lengthy sequences where no dialogue is spoken on-screen, we get narration by Dilios (David Wenham, better known as Faramir from the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy), who is our Goebbels-like figure, relating the story of the battle to a Spartan audience some months later. Intriguingly, some of his dialogue is directly lifted from contemporary sources such as Aeschylus or later commentators like Plutarch for added effect. Because the movie is concerned explicitly with recreating scenes from the graphic novel, the acting is somewhat stilted and dialogue tends to be minimalistic, with plenty of emphasis on speeches and dramatic pronounciations (such as the infamous, "Tonight we dine in HELL!" or the "Come get them!" response to a Persian demand to lay down their arms, although interestingly this is actually mentioned in classical accounts of the battle). It is quite notable that the acting and dialogue in the sequences back in Sparta - a subplot established only in the film - is much more traditional.Stylistically the movie is a tremendous achievement, with extensive CGI backgrounds and colour grading combining to give the film an almost unique visual identity of its own. The battle sequences are exceptionally impressive, if totally unrealistic, although the dramatic shifts between slow-motion and normal speed become rather boring after a while. Musically, the film shifts from a traditional score to a more rock-like theme which is used at moments of extreme drama or action, but it works reasonably well.300 is definitely a very interesting film with a unique visual identity. The actors do a generally good job given the limitations they are working under. However, a lot of people can't quite get to grips with what the film is actually about and spend an enormous amount of time moaning about the Spartans not wearing armour, calling the Athenians boy-lovers when pedastry was actually instituionalised among the Spartan warrior class, having the Ephors as deformed priests rather than an elected council or kicking Persian diplomats down a well when in fact this was an incident from the earlier Persian invasion under Darius (and Xerxes didn't send diplomats to Athens or Sparta during his attack because of this). All of this is totally irrelevant: the film is a story being told by the highly imaginative Dilios to get the Spartan army riled up for the Battle of Plataea. His depiction of the Persians as lunatic dual-wielding masked swordsmen led by a ten-foot-tall androgyne (a near-unrecognisable Rodrigo Santoro, better known as the short-lived Paulo from Season 3 of Lost) is due to him wanting to portray the enemy as a monstrous force to be destroyed, and not because either the director or the writer wanted to make racist slurs against Iran.That said, a lot of viewers may dislike the film simply because it is so ludicrously over-the-top on almost every level, from its snarling villains to lecherous old priests to gigantic war-rhinos. As for myself, I thoroughly enjoyed it.300 is available now on DVD in the UK and the USA. The director, Zack Snyder, is currently filming a movie adaption of the seminal graphic novel Watchmen for release in 2009.
Was I surprised? (2008-06-22)  Yes I was. I so enjoyed this film, I watched it again the same day.
300 Rises to the Occasion (2008-06-20) I thought this was a thoroughly good rendition of the famous battle where 300 Spartans held the cream of the Persian army at bay before succoming. Yes it is a film based on a graphic novel but no worst for that at all. I was well entertained by it and recomend it to you.
Rousing and spectacular with overdone political message (2008-06-08) A few years ago 'Gladiator' seemed to herald the much needed return of the tetosterone fuelled Ancient Historical blockbuster. Unfortunately, recent flops such as 'Troy' and 'Alexander' seemed equally to have killed the revivial at (re)birth, like a deformed Spartan child, as well as sadly reinforcing the well ingrained popular contrast between effeminate Greece and warrior Rome. Here, however, with a lush animated gothic backdrop to serve a steady stream of spectacular, bloody and superbly choreographed battle scenes, we have a film that does justice to the epic tale of how 300 Ancient Greek warriors fought off the hordes of Xerxe's Persian army and, in doing so, enabled the survival of the nascant European civilisation. One of the greatest events in our 2,500 year history finally told through a stunning array of images that will probably never leave the minds of any schoolboy that watches it - how could anyone be so churlish as to criticise that? Well the film does come with a quite indescently thick layer of clumsy Hollywood moralising and political allegory drawn rather more crudely than the beautifully rendered cgi animations. I believe the 'clash of civilisations' is real and inevitable, but the heavy handed attempt to bludgeon the viewer into believing that the Spartans died heroically for Freedom Fries, American Idol and even Hilary Clinton, does the remarkable culture of Ancient Greece a huge disservice. It's probably beyond the intellectual scope of most of the tetosterone targetted audience of this film to consider that the Islamic world is as much of a Hellenistic heir to the classical world as our 21st century American perversion of Greek (and Renaissance) Humanism is. However, after recent flops, this film is a noble attempt to capture the valour of Ancient Greece. Enjoy it for the right reasons.
great fun (2008-06-06)  great popcorn entertainment, its complete rubbish and has many flaws but viewed as a bit of throwaway rubbish to watch on a saturday its perfectly fine
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