Movie Review: 300

Ok, I saw 300 last night. I’ve been waiting for this movie for ever, avidly following along its production blog and watching it come together. The graphic novel is one of my favourite of all times. Here’s the thing - I was so psyched to see the movie for so long that it was almost impossible for it to live up to my expectations, and sadly it didn’t. I liked the movie, for sure, but I had some problems with it. The short review is this - you should probably go see it because it’s damn cool. Even my wife thought it was good and didn’t crush me for making her go to a midnight show on a school night, so that’s saying something. Now read on for the longer review - completely sans spoilers for those who care.

Let me start with the bad. Really, I’m not one to criticize a movie based on its deviations from its source material. Movies are a different medium and if you doggedly stick to the book you end up with the first Harry Potter. They can and should stray from their base as long as they stay true to the theme and feel of the original. Having said that, though, what I think was one of the real strengths of Frank Miller’s work was that the novel was so bare and raw. There was minimal dialogue and to a large degree, there was minimal story (which is, I suppose, problematic for a 2 hour movie). It was a lot of ambiance and art, building up to an ending you know in advance. The movie, however, had to add in a lot of story which added a good bit of cruft - without being spoilerish, I believe that all the scenes that occur in Sparta after Leonidas leaves were pretty much completely irrelevant to the movie and while some where good scenes, it detracts from the focus of the show.

One thing they added a lot of (a lot compared to the book) was sentimentality. There’s a quote from the book and the movie (sadly I lent mine to someone so can’t find the exact quote) that says there’s no room for softness in a Spartan life. I think it applies to this story as well, but they added it in here and there and played it up. Compared to other movies, it was barely any, but still I think it could have been done much more subtley - the feelings and emotion were all present in the book, but presented in a less in your face way.

My other problem with the movie was the scoring. To me the music and scoring in a movie are incredibly important and 300 went a really old school obvious route. Orchestral crescendo’s drove the battles forward and lilting flutes (or something) brought you into a romantic mood. I think for a movie like this something more novel or generally more better should have been used. At least something a little more subtle. The sound was just too cliche for 300. This may be a minor point for most, but I really love it when a movie uses great music to great effect.

Those are my two biggest complaints, too many strands of movie that detract from the super simple theme of inevitability and trite scoring. As for the good, let’s see. Obviously the look of the movie is fantastic. At very few points was it distracting, for pretty much the entire movie I thought it was visually stunning. Periodically it cuts the flow of the movie to have a shot that says, “This shot is now one made to look identical to the graphic novel.” Which in its way was pretty impressive, although sometimes seemed a little forced. But the look of the characters and the background were truly amazing, even down to the artwork on the closing credits - they did an unbelievable job with this.

The battle scenes were also extremely well done. The choreographing was really excellent and the camera tricks they used, playing around with speed and color and cgi, were very effective. Really effective, thems was some good violence. It maintained a sense of the epicness of the battle without actually being an epic battle. The action scenes were all very personal focusing on a few or even one character, despite the ravening hordes. This was the best of the movie and they do a great job keeping each scene fresh and interesting.

The acting was also good. Gerard Butler was excellent. He was a really great King Leonidas. However, all the Leonidas’s (there are childhood scenes) were amazing. I don’t think any of them (besides Gerard) even had a speaking part, but their expressions and their eyes told volumes. Really, you see some scenes where these kids give you a look that is just frightening, not at all over the top. See the movie, you’ll see what I mean.

Overall, 300 is a really good movie, Zack Snyder did a good job and you should see it. I think it added too much sentimentality on several fronts and the scoring was wielded a little bluntly. It’s a movie with a look unlike anything I’ve seen. If I hadn’t read the book, I doubt I’d have a lot of the same reservations with regard to the story - which was, as hollywood goes, quite streamlined (in a good way). I’d give it an 8.5 out of 10, I think.

UPDATE: I just read Jamie S. Rich’s review of the movie. And am glad to see that we agree on pretty much everything (he just says it a lot better than me - but he’s a writer so you know, that’s just the way it goes). His mention of Lynn Varley prominently in the credits is very right, I was glad to see it when I saw it but didn’t mention it in my review because I forgot to - glad I got to fix that problem. Personally, I think his take on the scoring where he gives the orchestra a pass and the nu-metal a fail isn’t quite right, but I think in general we’re more or less in agreement that there was little art and a lot of bludgeoning in the use of music. And his talk of Ephialtes and Xerxes were some of the scenes I was talking about when I talk of some distracting scenes. It’s another review worth reading, the short is that he gives it a recommended but only just.

Mar 9th, 2007 · Comments RSS · · · · · Tags: movies · review