Director: Zack Snyder, 15, 117min

Stars: Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, Dominic West

On selected release



This stylised, gloriously silly adaptation of a graphic novel by Frank Miller, the creator of Sin CIty, is set to be the first big hit of the year. While similar blue screen and CGI techniques made Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City movie a thing of morbid beauty, its narrative ambition — multi-stranded and episodic — may have put some people off.

Though it looks equally dazzling, with its monochromatic vistas streaked with pennants of spurting blood, in terms of the story, 300 makes a virtue of its simplicity. It’s a chest-beating war cry of a movie which, like the Spartan warriors it tells of, exists solely for the battle.

BACKGROUND

• 300

• 300 - Sunday Times review

• Cool hunter: Spartans

• Life in a Spartan Regime

• Immortal Combat - Interview with Gerald Butler

Thank Thermopylae for your Starbucks

On a low budget, with a cut-price cast and a graphic-novel script, 300 is a film that’s framing the future of the action movie

Related Internet Links

• 2007 London Film Festival coverage

• Times Online Film Trailers

While the story is derived from Ancient Greek accounts, there is little historical accuracy. The battle of Thermopylae is reimagined by Miller as a homoerotic, testosterone-sodden carnival of gym-honed midriffs clad in highly inappropriate fighting gear. The Spartans’ leather pants and capes are only slightly more outlandish than the get-up of the Persian King Xerxes, which consists of numerous facial piercings and full eye make-up. He looks as if he would be more at home working the cloakrooms at the gay club Trade than commanding an army bent on world domination.

Leading the Spartans is King Leonidas (Butler). His immaculately trimmed beard is the compass that points the way for Leonidas and his 300 brave soldiers. Their direction is always forward into battle — the Spartans never retreat and never surrender, even when confronted by Xerxes’ most savage fighting rhino. The Spartans bestride the battlefield, using the fallen bodies of their enemies as part of their defensive strategy. The Persian troops are confronted by glistening pecs, glinting spears and broad grins that speak of absolute job satisfaction.

It’s exhilarating stuff, and Snyder gets the most out of every cent of what was reportedly a comparatively low budget. Still, you start to tire of all the macho posturing and male bonding. Headey brings beauty and dignity to the role of Leonidas’ wife, Gorgo, but her scenes in Sparta are very much a side salad to the redraw meat of the battle sequences.

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