Bohemian Cinema By Jonathan Pacheco

“300” (2007)

Directed by Zack Snyder

Satisfaction:Pleased Tags: Frank Miller, Gore, Violence, Comic

300 is plagued by the same condition that got movies like Snatch: the cool-factor. You see the film and you’re blown away by how amazingly cool it is. Then you watch it again, or start thinking about it, and you realize that once you’re done with all of the wowing on the surface, there’s not much left to the movie. It’s kind of like cotton candy—yes, 300 is cotton eye-candy. Some may say that’s fine; I would say it’s not. A movie can surprise you and wow you with its coolness only so many times, so what happens after that?

The film is supposed to be about Leonidas (Gerard Butler), king of the Spartans, and his 300-soldier stand against the mighty Persian army led by a very tall Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro). That’s pretty much the extent of the story, and everything else is action and spectacle. Minus a few spots where the greenscreening could have used some work, the visual effects are exceptional, even though I expected a few more truly stunning images. It’s a minor quibble, because the images can be quite impressive. Two in particular absolutely blew me away: first was a shot of the Spartans on a cliff as they watch the Persian ships being tossed by waves. Another cliff shot, this time the silhouettes of the Spartans as they push the Persians off the edge, was equally as beautiful. Needless to say, the look of this film is unique and possibly revolutionary, and for that, as well as for providing a few entertaining battle sequences, I give the film credit (though director Zack Snyder’s obsession with slow motion borders on fetishism).

However, there is only one character in this film who is remotely interesting, and that’s the main one, Leonidas. The problem is that he only shows his personality a couple of times because he’s too busy yelling about Sparta (a word he seems to love to hear come out of his own mouth). That, or he’s busy…killing. But when we do see flashes of his personality, it’s always gold. He has that great, smart-aleck, typical Frank Miller sarcasm—the kind that made his Dark Knight and Sin City comics classics (and the lack of which makes his All-Star Batman and Robin series an absolute dud). Yet we barely see it in 300, and I don’t know yet whether that’s the fault of Snyder or the original graphic novel (either way, it shouldn’t matter). A few minor characters are given a conversation or two that don’t further the plot, but it’s obvious that the film is trying to make up for its shortcomings. Consequently, I found myself watching the film and saying, “Why do I care about any of this?” Because it’s “cool?” Sorry, but that’s not nearly enough.

Another problem with the character of Leonidas is that he suffers from Jack Bauer Syndrome: he’s pretty much invincible and infallible. Flawed characters are always the most interesting, so when we have a character who is always right, and who we know will always be right, it gets uninteresting.

Is it okay to ask this much of the film? My brother tells me that he’s okay with all of this because 300 is meant to be a wall-to-wall action extravaganza—what’s wrong with that? I guess I’m not faulting the film for what it is, but for what it could be, and isn’t. The film has the potential to be ridiculously amazing, but it chose to focus solely on visuals and neglected its story. The reason people enjoyed the Battle of Helms Deep in The Two Towers so much was because the story built up to the moment, and it was a climax that had stakes; you truly believed that these characters were in trouble because they spent a good portion of the film developing the situation and establishing the importance of the confrontation. In 300, it takes about 10 minutes for their Helms Deep to start, and I kept asking myself, “Why should I care?”

Nevertheless, it is a movie that everyone should see, if only for the experience, because what it does manage to do correctly, it does with flying colors. I just wish the filmmakers had set their sights higher.