Review: 300

Normally, I hate stupid films. I like a film that makes me think, and that has puzzles to work out. I hate brainless, style-over-substance, thoroughly ridiculous unrealistic action films. Asian action kung-fu movies are the worst offendors here.

Despite this, I bloody loved 300.

Sure, it isn’t exactly historically acurate (what with Persian monsters and the hideously deformed Immortals), and the Spartan warriors are depicted as invincible super-soldiers, but as I was watching the slow-mo hacking of limbs and ultra-cool combat sequences, I just didn’t care.

This film is extremely stylised, but somehow doesn’t sacrifice too much substance. There is a plot there, albeit a very thin one, but you do empathise with the plight of the Spartan soldiers. The Persian army is well depicted as a vast and terrifying war machine to rival anything out of Lord of the Rings.

Speaking of Lord of the Rings, you can see similarities between the trilogy and this film. The persian foot soldiers are Orcs, the elephants are stylistically oversized to the point of becoming Mumakil, and the monsters are blatantly Trolls.

Neverthelass, 300 does something right that Lord of the Rings did wrong. Let me clear up any confusion here: I loved LOTR. 300, though, has an energy and a cool-factor that LOTR never had. LOTR had epic battles and mighty heroes, but nobody ever got their head split open. You never felt like it was actual people actually killing. In 300, when the Persian army first attacks the Spartan phalanx, you are dragged into the combat. You feel like you’re there. You can believe that a lot of people died messily at Thermoplyae.

Because 300 is based on an actual battle. 300 Spartans really did fight a massive army of Persians. Maybe not quite a million as is said in the film, but hundreds of thousands is not unrealistic. The Immortals, too, were an actual Persian elite unit, whose strength was kept at 10,000 (when one died another was drafted in to replace them, hence the unit was ‘immortal’). They weren’t the half-human masked men depicted in the movie, but they existed. Oh, and they weren’t clones of the Stormtroopers from Star Wars.

Also, and I find this fact rather impressive, the wall of Persian dead became so high that attacking waves of Persians had to climd over a mountain of their own comrades to attack the elite Spartans. True enough, a wall of Persian dead makes an appearence in the movie.

To sum up, 300 is an incredible achievement. I would describe it with words like “spectacular” and “awesome” and kick-ass”, but not “clever” or “thought-provoking”. With 300, it’s the experience that counts, and it’s one hell of an experience.

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