Buff barbarians do battle in the Spartan CGI opus 300

Old battle, new reality


Buff barbarians do battle in the Spartan CGI opus 300





Montreal Mirror


March 8,2007


by MATTHEW HAYS

Anticipation runs high for 300, the latest adaptation of a Frank Miller graphic novel. The last one, of course, was Sin City, a pleasing film that pushed the limits of comic book-movie aesthetic, giving us a relatively fresh cinematic experience.

Here, director Zack Snyder (who also directed the intriguing Dawn of the Dead remake) takes us back to 480 BC, where Miller imagines the legendary Battle of Thermopylae. Basically, a crackpot king with delusions of being a god tells a bunch of Spartans to surrender, as their empire will soon be his. You just don’t push Spartans around like this—especially Spartans who clearly spend a great deal of time at the gym, like these men do. (Honestly, the actors playing these Spartans have better-endowed chests than the late Anna Nicole Smith.)

Though there are only 300 Spartan warriors, they are so damn good at fending off attacks and kicking warrior ass that, no matter what the evil king sends their way, they seem to be able to fight back. There’s plenty of posturing back and forth. There are spears and arrows, decapitations and dismemberments, angry roars of pissed-off barbarians and the sound of period banter (everyone sounds like they’re auditioning for a Shakespeare play). 300 is hitting a number of demographic notes at once: Lord of the Rings fans, Dungeons and Dragons types and homosexual gym queens will all find reason to rejoice.

Miller and Snyder spin a good yarn, but the real draw here is the film’s aesthetic quality. It’s another example of a film where the virtual meets the real. Drenched in sepia tones, 300 has its cast chewing up scenery that is clearly CGI; it’s a funny feeling, watching movies like these, and those who find the CGI hype just plain tedious will feel pretty much the same way about this film.

300 is very much indicative of the two main influences on cinema of the past 15 years: comic books and videogames. The filmmakers never let their source material leave our consciousness, constantly reminding us that we’re watching a graphic novel on the big screen. And the battle sequences are undeniably impressive and hair-raising; Snyder is using CGI in the best possible way, to its best possible ends.

If the warring factions in the movie seem divided, I suspect audiences will be equally at odds over what, precisely, to make of 300. What will seem wildly entertaining and stimulating to some will simply seem like an old Saturday-morning serial updated with new effects to others. It was hard not to think that the filmmakers were making a nod to the old Hercules movies of the ’60s when a key bit of dialogue references the legendary figure. The effects are classier, but the result feels similar.

Like it or lump it, this is where the medium is headed. Now that computers can fake virtually anything, now that dead actors have turned in performances, the brief period in history when watching a movie indicated to an audience that they were watching something resembling reality is drawing to a close. It’s funny that 300 is about a battle that happened so far in the past; it’s also an accurate glimpse into the future of the movies.

300 opens Friday, March 9


http://www.montrealmirror.com/2007/030807/film2.html