Talkfilm.co.uk User Collection

Like to Rent Movies?

Check out LOVEFiLMs DVD Rental service.

No late frees. 2 week free trial period. 65'000 DVDs available.

Find any title you want on DVD or Blu Ray.

Join our DVD Club today.

TWO WEEKS FREE!

Fields of golden wheat: check. Dastardly scheming politicians: check. Battles of the kind video games are made for: check.

Is 300 just another swords and sandals epic to fill a couple of hours, or something new?

Well, the plot is nothing new in the grand scheme of things.

300 Spartans defended their home against thousands of invading Persians in the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C, and men were men and blood was spilled. King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) has a heart, a sword and some sly one-liners that will make you smile and want to follow him in to battle. His 300 brave men, soldiers all of them, are taken from the Generic Warrior school of acting. The nasty Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro), the God King who wants to rule the world, including Sparta, seems to have got lost on his way to the Stargate convention. The politicians left in Sparta, to debate whether Leonidas has broken the law by taking the 300 to the Persians, we have seen many many times before.

On the basis of that paragraph, it sounds like it may be worth staying at home and watching Crowe Gladiate once again.

But 300 is so much more than the plot.

It is a visual feast. And not a Big Mac and fries - it is a 12 course banquet of such gobsmacking eye candy that your eyes will want to rest for days after taking it all in.

This was compounded by seeing the film at the IMAX on the South Bank in London, with a screen so large that trying to watch everything at once was nigh impossible. But what was seen was beautiful, if such a word can be used to describe carnage on such a grand scale.

Without doubt the battle scenes are the most stylised and visually stunning segments of the film. CG blood splashes across the camera. Slow-mo and speed-up stuttering movement adds to the intensity. Limbs fall and people lose their heads. Not for the faint-hearted, but this is a tale of warriors who saw death as a noble thing and mention as they see the gathering Persian army that this may be the battle they have been looking for.

Early skirmishes suggest a Troy-style wobble cam approach to the melee, and this led to a few raised eyebrows - where was the CG combat we had read so much about? When the fighting starts in earnest, the CG arrives, and the first time Leonidas pushes forward like a hurricane armed with a sword and shield, all was good (although not for the Persians, of course). Subsequent battling all has a glorious coating of CG that makes the movie what it is.

However, the CG also creates a few issues.

The battle CG works because it is so stylised. The CG in Sparta, especially when the politicians are doing their eyebrow raising, works not so well. I will blame Phantom Menace for this - we have seen green screen government before, and we have been traumatised by it. Even the addition of the more than a little attractive Lena Headey as the Spartan Queen distracts only for a moment before the eye starts wandering to the background and it starts to look unreal. Unreal works for fighting. Unreal does not work for men in robes talking about treachery and adultery.



The performances are not overshadowed by the CG - Butler especially is fantastic as the snarling King of the city that throws its deformed babies down a cliff face rather than keep them alive. He manages to do the softer moments justice, and the dialogue in the battles is on a par with Gladiator and Braveheart et al. Even though the 300 are cast from the same mold as dozens of sword-wielders we have seen before, they do their jobs admirably, especially David Wenham as Dilios who gets some rousing lines in the last act.

It is a difficult film to try and say good things about when the genre has been saturated with more misses than hits in recent years - everyone has seen Gladiator, tried to watch Alexander, quietly mentions Kingdom of Heaven when pushed and rolls their eyes and admits their girlfriend forced them to see Troy and Brad in a skirt. To my mind 300 stands above all of these - the stylised look and feel of it makes it unique and not just another Gladiator wannabe.

See it just for the battle scenes and the closing moments. Watch it again and I have a feeling even the bickering in the senate will add an extra layer to the whole affair.

And I really recommend seeing it at an IMAX screen near you if you want immersion of a level standard cinema just does not do...

300 is released in the UK on March 23. The BFI IMAX (website) has the film on the huge screen from March 22 - get in touch with them for tickets!

Official Website