Flak Magazine: Review of 300, 3-15-07

What manner of force could possibly defeat an almost infinite army of ninjas, orcs, Muggles, teenaged lesbians, wizards... and one very wacky rhinoceros?

Perhaps a group of 300 totally not-gay ancient Greek warriors who don't, incidentally own slaves.

If you buy this premise, you're plugged in and on board for the CGI-assisted ride of your life. If you reject this premise, 300 may require a little bit of pre-emptory explanation before you're willing to strap yourself in for 117 minutes of the most stylishly frenetic action yet to hit the big screen.

The explosively popular 300 is inspired, at least in part, by a famous battle that pitted an elite unit of superbly trained Spartan soldiers holding a rocky coastal pass against an overwhelming Persian force in the year 480 BC. The short-hand version of the battle: the superior spirit and fighting skill of the Spartans is nigh invulnerable, the time they buy allows their countrymen to get their collective act together, the Spartans fall only to treachery, and their bravery inspires all of Greece to unite against the evil invading Persians.

Sparta (a mixed-government city-state that tilted toward dictatorship, and sported a serious dependency on a serf-caste known as helots) might have held some aspects of moral superiority over the Persian Empire, but that's debatable. 300, however, makes no bones about it. And to really pound its message home, the assorted forces of the Persian Empire — commanded almost exclusively and somewhat inaccurately by huge, unpleasant black dudes — aren't merely a multi-racial fighting force. They're a fun-loving motley intergalactic crew more suited to the Mos Eisley spaceport than the ancient Near East. Fat guys with cleaver blades mounted on their arms! Orcs, straight out of Tolkien, toting ninja-style swords! Giant armored elephants (again, straight out of the Lord of the Rings, but considerably less impressive) — all no match for some straight-talking, very ripped, totally not gay ancient Greek warriors and their swords and spears.

And so the fight that dominates the film proceeds. Scan other reviews of 300 and one two-word descriptor comes up over and over again (in both favorable and unfavorable ways): "video game."

It's dead-on. The Persian army is composed of grunts, mini-bosses, super grunts, more mini bosses, and Xerxes, the badass dude at the end of the game. Who is a seven-foot tall super bodypierced black guy with a harem full of crazy-ass Lesbians of the World. The film takes great pains to use a restricted color palette, an amped-up soundtrack and CGI blood splatters to turn historically-grounded combat into a cinematic version of Golden Axe. The stutter-stepping speed of the film — sometimes pulling frames, sometimes slowing down to a glacial pace — takes it one more step away from realism.

Echoing the finest visual cliches of martial chopfests such as Zulu Dawn, The Seven Samurai and Starship Troopers, 300 is an incredibly engaging romp, assuming you're comfortable with the on-air stylized deaths of thousands of people as a romp. And 300 makes it easy for you to feel comfortable. The Spartan heroes (led by Gerard Butler as the courageously and utterly badass King Leonidas) are unflappable, utterly in love with battle, yet occasionally driven mad by the pressure of giving their lives in a hopelessly lopsided fight. The Persians are a mixture of pathetically cowed slaves forced into combat and the kind of folks who employ pathetically cowed slaves to fight their battles for them. It's hard not to cheer as the pile of Persian dead mounts until it forms a towering wall.

From a political perspective, 300 is somewhat more troubling. It's hard — maybe impossible — to view a new film about war without reflexively taking a mental trip to Iraq and comparing notes. If you're a permissive (or sloppy) thinker, you might view 300 as an endorsement of Bush Administration policy. The Spartan hawks are moral, courageous, and on the front line fighting to defend the nation. The Spartan "doves" back home, such as they are, are not merely undermining the war effort through a misbegotten dislike of military action; they're actually bought off by the enemy. Dominic West (who shone like a diamond as McNulty in The Wire) does a zesty turn as Theron, a Spartan politician whose quest for "realistic" foreign policy could easily double as a cruel lampoon of modern-day anti-war skeptics.

Of course, the "Persia = Saddam / Theron = Barack Obama" analogy falls apart when you remember that the Persians were the military superior force who were invading Greece... hold on... is 300 actually an incredibly subversive endorsement of Iraqi insurgent tactics?

Not so much. When you get right down to it, 300 isn't about history, it isn't about politics, and it isn't about characters. It's about killin' — and looking great while you do it. And, shucks. Maybe that's something the world could use a little more of.

— James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)