Here’s a caveat for prudes planning to attend the sword-and-sandal combat drama “300”: Forget gifts. Beware Greeks baring all!
It’s hard-bodied torsos on parade in director and co-writer Zack Snyder’s bloody, painterly and irresistible adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel about the clash of ancient civilizations in the infamous Battle of Thermopylae. The girls will like ogling the boys. The boys will like ogling the violence. And the boys who like the boys will looove the leather Speedos — which are just about the only clothing that the ripped and handsome hunks here are wearing.
What it lacks in narrative and historical intricacy and fresh dialogue, the very visual epic makes up for in potentially campy homoerotic undertones, an unapologetically hawkish glamorization of war and high artistic achievement in cinematography, production design and mise-en-scene (a fancy term for how the various objects are arranged in the movie frame).
As played with ferociousness and an imposing mature beauty by “Phantom of the Opera’s” Gerard Butler, Leonidas is king of the Spartans. His Greek city-state is notorious for citizens with a, well, spartan nature (i.e. disciplined, militant, fearless, self-sacrificing).
Around 480 B.C., the Persians have amassed an Asian assault force of ga-jillions to conquer the fractured nations of old Greece. The baddies are led by Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) who, according to today’s movie, was the most jewelry-laden, power-mad dandy this side of a hip-hop star.
Though wildly outnumbered by the Xerxes army, Leonides refuses to kowtow to him. Our hero defies his own corrupt priests and traitorous councilmen like Theron (Dominic West), enlists a super-elite regimen of 300 Spartan warriors and — with little other backup — sets out to defend Greece at the Hot Gates of Thermopylae. That pass between a mountain cliff and the sea will force the invading hordes to march on the small but mighty Spartan forces through a very narrow channel. Meanwhile, back on the home front, as he and his loyal men attend to the gutsy suicide mission, Leonides’s strong/sexy queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) must try to buck hostile political winds and garner support for her husband.
Against filmmaker Snyder’s sweeping desaturated color backdrops, as faithfully reproduced from Miller’s original fantasy imagery, the outrageous battle action rages with gory majesty as a freak show of two-legged and four-legged lifeforms face off and a hailstorm of arrows fly.
Unless you want to strain to see the Persians as symbols of their descendants in the Middle East now or look for a modern wartime allegory in it, there’s nothing much of substance to be had out of this popcorn movie. But if you want to watch a gorgeously packaged adventure, “300” has got your number.
‘300’
4/5 stars
Starring: Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, Dominic West
Director: Zack Snyder
Rated R for graphic battle sequences throughout, some sexuality and nudity
