300: B

There is danger in indulging too far in either the storyline or the, how to say it?, surface of the film 300. It isn't that either aspect is particularly bad. No, the storyline - directed and co-written by Zach Snyder - is based on the ancient Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. The audience benefits well from the knowledge that as you watch 300 Sparta warriors, lead by their king Leonydus (Gerard Butler), slaughter an entire Persian Army, lead by god-king Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro), that this actually happened. At time it can be breath-taking. Then there are the effects, the costumes, and the actors. All of it seems to have a thick coat of CGI but that's ok. In even the most domestic of scenes (say, when a congressman confronts the left-behind Queen (Lena Headey) in an expansive courtyard under the ginormous sunset) your eyes will bulge and your heart will race at the sheer beauty of the world in which they live. That beauty is well-earned seeing as how it is based on Frank Miller's graphic novel of the same name (he here exec-produces).

But as there is much to enjoy in this movie there is much more to dislike. You see, nearly every time a Spartan opened his/her mouth what they were to say next, I didn't want to hear and when I did...I winced. This is because the script is so heavy-handed, so bombastic, that nearly half way through I had doomed this picture to B-Movie hell. There are the usual homophobic rib-ticklers (and they are perhaps well deserved: the Athenians were known homosexuals and in this Spartan paradise of gleaming abs, hard-as-stone twelve-packs, and barely any clothes on male or female there were sure to be more). And there is a lot of superfluous nonsense. Maybe Zach Snyder should have learned from Marie Antoinette that it's best if you don't talk so badly while dressed so well (when you are dressed).

Then the surfaces came through for me as Snyder's camera went swooping in fantastic slo-mo at just the right moments (namely as when blood is darting through the air like specks of dust to land innocently, even beautifully, on the armor of fellow warriors). Or when his warriors go surging in beautifully sparse fighting styles that send innumerable enemies crashing to the similarly beautiful dirt (I am a particular fan of the Spartans ingenuity as cunning tricksters as well as fighters). Or perhaps when the thespians themselves bellow certain lines with such operatic gustow that the screen started shaking and I followed, shaken by the thrill of it all. Gerard Butler, as the King, and Lena Headey, as his Queen, are possessed of such internal strength that their occasional lack of wit is forgiven. It is Rodrigo Santoro though, as the "god" Xerxes, who is most impressive. His small amount of time on screen is counteracted by the knowledge that every second of it is rich with his exotic, slightly ironic (for a person who might be a transvestite at first glance, he sure has a deep voice), persona.

But the time that Synder's direction, or the visual effects of the film, or even the actor's themselves spend inside your mind is inversely porportional to how long you'll remember it after you leave (in English: for all the 117 minutes you may be slightly astounded, you won't recall more than a few seconds of that a week later). There then is the chief fault of playing so well with Miller's surface artistry and bringing it so exquisitely to the screen. This is only occasionally a ride for the heart, because mostly your mind will either be wildly indifferent to this bombastic spectacle of blood and flesh or wildly enthralled at the innovative way in which it is executed.