300

I am almost as excited to right this review as I was to see this movie.

300 tells the story of the Battle of Thermopylae during which 300 Spartans lead by their warrior King Leonidas, Gerald Butler of Tomb Raider fame, defended their homelands against more than one hundred thousand warriors from all corners of the globe making up the Persian army, lead by the self proclaimed god king, Xerxes - Rodrigo Santoro. The Spartans are breed from birth to be warrior of the bravest and fiercest sort so while 300 versus several hundred thousand seems a little more than unreasonable for the Spartans it was an opportunity to do what they were born to do, die in battle defending their country.

From birth the moment a Spartan male is born it is inspected and if there are any imperfections found on the child it is discarded. For those that kept from that moment on all they know is training and battle and pain. Then when the boy turns seven he is taken away for his training and eventual initiation where they are required to roam the country with nothing but a spear. It is during this initiation when the teen aged Leonidas encounters a vicious wolf. It was this moment that defined Leonidas a true warrior in that not only did he slay the beast, but he outsmarted the animal and never showed a moment of fear or hesitation. Leonidas returns to his home and take his rightful place as king.

It would be easy for a movie with this much testosterone and adrenaline to do nothing more than have a bunch of battle sequences with nearly naked men showing off their abs of steel and fighting prowess. In stead we got and more. There was not shortage of blood and gore and amazingly choreographed fight sequences they movie was balanced with an interesting sub-plot that featured the Queen of Sparta, Lena Headey and the head of the Spartan council Theron, Dominic West. Headey does some political maneuvering as she entreats the council to send the rest of the army to aide to her husband and their king, while West is secretly conspiring with Xerxes to have Sparta overthrown. While this story is original to the movie it was a positive addition that gave the movie more depth and gave the audience something to look at while the Leondidas and his men rested however briefly between battles.

This movie was a lot of fun, I am unfairly skeptical when it comes to movies that are shot almost entirely against green screen, in many ways CGI has made film makers lazy. However that was not the case in this movie. Synder struck the essential balance of using the CGI, but not relying on it. The backgrounds and environments were a piece of the story, but not the story itself. The story was carried on the back of Leonidas and his men that managed to make tough, body builder type warriors more than just brutal thugs. These were soldiers of honor and intellect and made watching their brutality on the battle seem more like what one would expect to see when a coach’s game plan is carried out to perfection. Once again Frank Miller’s unique graphic art is made three dimensional with style and precision.

GRADE - A