Strength and Honour

This weekend I saw the much anticipated 300(in IMAX). I will try to review it here without giving away anything you can't grasp from just viewing the trailer.

Now, I am a history buff, particularly ancient world, and I am a reenactment/recreationist and part of that is sword combat. My armor is based upon the 700 Thespian volunteer-warriors that fought alongside the 300 Spartans and refused to abandon them. I had to spend a good bit of time immersing myself in anything involving the movie 300 before it opened in order to get all my frustration at the historical inacuracies out before I went to see the movie so that it would not ruin my appreciation of the movie itself.

That being said, I LOVED the movie. And I will be going back to see it in the theaters at least another two times. My knowledge of the time period, cultures, soldiers, warfare, and armaments in no way detracted from my enjoyment of the movie. Would that have been the case had I not "prepared" myself? I can't say, but I can say I still would have enjoyed the movie immensely.

The visuals are quite breathtaking. You know everything but the actors are CGI, whether you knew anything about the movie going in or not. This isn't to say the graphics aren't stunning and well done, they are. But, it's obvious that a computer was heavily involved. The visuals have a very similar feel to Sin City's. This is not a bad thing. As I said, things are obviously computer generated, but that only adds to the fantastical, graphic novel feel. If anything it helps, not hinders, the composition of the movie. The use of computers for the backgrounds and creatures definitely frees the creators to bring in these elements in ways they could not have achieved with the real things.

The costuming was superb. Now, I know, if all you've seen are the posters, you may ask "What costuming?" The details were there and they worked(unlike Eragon). The red cloaks of the Spartans had spectacular swoosh to them, undoubtedly for the same reason the Nazgul cloaks hung so well in LOTR: there's a lot more fabric to them than you would think. The outfits of Queen Gorgo defy gravity in ways that would make Donatella Versace proud. The fabrics all have texture to them, from the rough spun of the Spartan cloaks, to the fine silk of Xerxes' entertainment. The props were similarly impressive. The spears all showed leather wrapping during close-ups, the Persian arrows were barbed in painfully beautiful fashion, and the helms of the Spartans reflected the punishment they withstood.

The acting was pretty good. The actors did the best they could with the lines they were given, and I must say the real weak point of the movie was the dialogue. The various actors playing the key Spartans had a spectacular grasp of what it meant to be Spartan and you could see it from the way they moved in combat to the looks on their faces during battle. Vincent Regan was spectacular in what is his second Greek period epic(the previous being Troy where he played Achilles's second) and was one of the highlight characters of the movie, despite the fact that his character is never actually given a name but referred to simply as "The Captain." I think he actually did a better job of things than Gerard Butler, who put a little too much into a few lines.

The fighting, surprisingly, I loved. I must admit to liking the fighting of Troy a little more but different forms, different set-ups, and a different quantity of combat mean the two, despite their roots, can't really be likened to each other. Now, again, I'm a sword fighter for fun, and I will never say sword combat in a movie or TV show is realistic(documentaries don't count), but there are degrees of inaccuracy. Troy's shield work was more accurate and effective, but 300 is definitely more accurate than the European style point dueling done with Asian slashing swords that we saw in Ultraviolet. The tempo of combat is where 300 really shines. Time slowed and sped up in a way that flowed and can be understood by anyone who has experienced the perceived time dilation of melee combat. No one just stood there waiting to be center screen to fight, in fact I came out of each battle scene wishing the shots had been wider and shown me more. The biggest problem is one that seems to be shared by many people. Blood is shown flying everywhere from every stab of the spear and slash of the sword, but none is on the ground. This may be a rating thing similar to why some video games have green blood(red blood in a game means an automatic increase in the maturity rating apparently) or it may be due to the fact that the blood is computer generated and they didn't want to deal with "painting" the blood on the ground. I don't know, and quite frankly, it didn't bug me enough to really detract from the experience.

All in all, I would highly recommend this movie to any and all adults. I would highly recommend you NOT bring anyone under 18 to see this movie. The only thing it's missing from the unholy triumvirate of things that make censors freak is foul language.

As I said at the beginning of this review, I will see this movie in the theaters at least another two times. And I think that is the most telling statement I can make.