Movie Review: 300

I went and saw the movie 300 the other night. I have to say, it was fantastic. There were a couple of semi-sappy parts near the end, but nothing I would qualify as a deal breaker when classifying this movie as one that rocks.

If you've seen any of the commercials, you know that this movie is very stylized. It's an adaption of Frank Miller's comic and they tried to portrait the way that Frank Miller stylized it in the comic form. The same thing was done to the movie version of Sin City. It works very well for the movie and the almost cartoony violence make the obscene amount of violence in the movie very easy to tolerate.

**On a similar note, but slightly off topic, have you read anything that Frank Miller has done in the past few years? Don't get me wrong, I loved Sin City (the comic and the movie), I loved 300, and I'm a big fan of his Dark Knight Returns comic. The sequel to Dark Knight Returns and just everything he's been doing lately (besides the movies) is utter crap. I just wanted to make mention. **

I happen to have an interest in ancient history, especially of the mythological or legendary status, so I was already familiar with the story of the battle of Thermopylae. I was familiar with several of the legendary battles and several of the legendary quotes. My favorite quote, which was done extremely well in the movie, is when the Persians tell the Spartans that they will fire so many arrows that they will block out the sun. The Spartans respond by saying "Then we shall fight in the shade". It was well delivered in the movie, which made me happy.

The fight scenes were fantastic. Now, they run into two classifications though. The first fight scene needs to be mentioned separately because it is unlike any of the others. It is not different in it's violence or style, but in HOW the battle was fought. In that first battle, they actually showed how the Spartans would have actually fought. They packed themselves tight and formed a wall of shields. Each soldiers shield is not to protect himself, but it is to protect the man beside you. They not only mention this fact, but they show it done well. The men behind that front line thrust spears above and below the wall of shields, just eviscerating the soldiers of the opposing army. They do this and move forward, rinse and repeat. They showed this extremely well in this movie. Once the soldiers ahead of them were nearly depleted, they break rank to finish them off. Now, you also have to remember that the Persian army was almost entirely made of slaves and peasants. None of these people had much, if any battle experience or training. This would be the equivalent of giving some random office worker some garden tools and asking him to go fight to the death with our most elite military commandos, who are fully armed and ready to rock and roll. The fight would be over so quickly, it almost wouldn't even be fun to watch.

There are a few sappy parts of the movie where the Queen is trying to sway the counsel to send reinforcements to her husband and his 300 troops. They played the sappy card a bit hard there, but they intersperse it in between some heavy action scenes, so all is forgiven.

For those who don't know their Greek history, I won't ruin the ending for you. Overall, the movie is one of the better and more entertaining movies I've seen this year. Everyone does a good job acting in it and the action scenes are unbelievably good. Go see the movie.