300

S has gamely put up with weeks of me shushing her whenever the 300 trailer comes on TV. And yes, you can only walk around yelling "This. Is. Sparta!" for so long before you get on everyone's nerves.

Synopsis. 300 hundred Spartans, led by King Leonidas, attempt to stop the invasion of God\King Xerxes' Persian Army by fighting them in a narrow pass.

So how much does this movie rock? Um, how about quite a lot? I fell in love with it when it was just a wee trailer. The original trailer. The one where they were still blasting NIN behind lots of slo-mo Persians taking a nasty header into a rocky pit. I snapped up the hardcover reprinting soon after and that only heightened my anticipation of the actual film.

Sadly though, it was one of those things where I built up the film up in my head so much that there was no way the real thing was ever going to live up to the hype. (It's called Stars Wars Syndrome and its a big reason why I'm trying to keep my expectation for the Transformers movie so low. Damn you Michael Bay!)

The cinematography in 300 is amazing. There are several incredibly elaborate battle scenes filmed in one continuous shot, speeding up and slowing down the frame rate for maximum effect. It's not a new technique but I don't think I've ever seen the device done on such a large scale. And like Miller's last big screen adapation much of the visual aesthetic of the film is pulled directly from the comic. Light and shadow are continually shaped and formed in every shot focusing the attention of the audience as needed.

Yes there are a lot of decapitations and dismemberments. But the blood flashes by so quickly on the screen, that the film never feels truly gory. Headless corpses don't bleed and the wounds on an arrow riddled solider are strangely clean. In fact, given the material, 300 is remarkably restrained. Once you get past the initial shock you'll see that even the more heinous of injuries are presented with very little blood.

The film's weakest moments come when it attempts to distance itself from the source material by tacking on an unessesary subplot. Having Leonidas' wife Queen Gorgo attempt to rally the nation behind her absent husband (using rousing speeches about freedom and duty) might have been intended to bring a feminine presence to the story but all it really does is slow the film down.

And Gerard Butler's undeniable screen presence as King Leonidas would have been better served by a stronger supporting cast. Rodrigo Santoro as Xerxes in particular delivered a weak performance, never quite managing to portray the menace and decadence nessecary to a megolmaniacal God\King.

So what's the final verdict? After years of bungled oppurtunites and missed chances it's nice to see comic book movies finally getting the chance to show a mainstream audience what the medium is capable of. 300 is one of the best examples I can think of where the essence of the original work has been translated successfully and effectively onto the big screen. Like any film it has it's weaknesses but when you put those aside I think you'll be surprised at just how powerful a movie it is.