300

Frank Miller’s gotta be one of the most satisfied comic book writers in the industry. First Sin City and now 300 have been transferred to the big screen with unerring faithfulness, something with which most writers would be overjoyed.

A retelling of the ancient tale of the 300 Spartans who stood against the Persians in 480 B.C., 300 takes more than a few creative liberties. Miller’s comic took the mythological retelling of such a story and simply made it literal. Thus the evil Xerxes is an unbelievably tall giant who has mutants and goat headed minstrels among his retinue, and the Spartans fly through the air impossibly in some sort of divine balletic carnage. It may be the most successful ‘swords and sandals’ movie ever released, but it’s really more of a fantasy. Everything is either fake or exaggerated, from the insanely muscled Spartans to the elephants they seem to have on loan from The Return of the King. It’s a gloriously beautiful and bloody spectacle, and as with Sin City it’s the imagery that is the focus of the film.

The actors all do sterling jobs, and David Wenham is particularly good as Dilios, the narrator of the tale. Gerard Butler in all his fearsome and bearded glory name drops Sparta and his Spartans probably more often than 007 ever uttered ‘Bond, James Bond’ in all 21 films, and Lena Heady has enough costume changes that it’s a little silly considering they all serve exactly the same function. Apart from her the (few) women in this film are reduced to sex objects, though to be fair there’s a whole lotta mostly naked men running around a lot of the time. It seems the Spartan extras were mainly cast on the strength of their abdominal muscles.

300 is not an overly complex film, and displays perhaps the same brutal simplicity of Sin City without the multi-narrative temporal shifts that made the latter appear to be complex. I have to rejoice at the continuing high-quality comic adaptations being developed, as well as an entry into the severely lacking ‘adult’ fantasy sub-genre of filmmaking. Zack Snyder, who helped make the studios a f*ckload of money, can now pretty much do anything he wants, and I’m thrilled to learn that he’s having a go at Alan Moore’s brilliant graphic novel ‘Watchman’, a film previously attached to Terry Gilliam and Darren Aronofsky.

300 is a thrilling film, admittedly without any particular depth. If you’re after spectacle on the silver screen, however, this is it.