Review of 300
I just saw a movie that’ll give your eyes boners, make your balls scream and make you poop DVD copies of THE TRANSPORTER. It’s called 300. I don’t know what the title has to do with the movie, but they could’ve called it KITTENS MAKING CANDLES and it’d still rule. It’s about these 300 Greek dudes who stomp the sugar-coated shit out of like a million other dudes. I have a feeling that a lot of high school sports coaches are going to show this film to their teams before they play. Also, gay dudes and divorced women are going to use screen captures for computer wallpaper.
The movie takes place about a million years ago, and it’s sort of like a prequel to SIN CITY. Except way less guns and cars but twice as much skull splitting. If you watch this movie and go into a Taco Bell, and say to the cashier, “I need some extra sauce packets” guess what? You’re getting twenty sauce packets because your face will punch him in the brain.
I can’t spoil the plot because THANK GOD THERE ISN’T ONE. Just ass kicking that kicks ass that, while said ass is getting kicked, is kicking yet more ass that’s hitting someone’s balls with a hammer made of ice but the ice is frozen whiskey.
TWO COOL THINGS ABOUT THE MOVIE AND ONE THING I DIDN’T LIKE:
COOL THING ONE:HEAVY METAL DURING BATTLE SCENES
Who gives a shit if the music isn’t historically correct? LORD OF THE RINGS could’ve used some Journey. This movie has that chu-CHUNG kind of metal that you hear in your head when your shift supervisor at Wetzel’s Pretzel is telling you that you’ll have to stay for clean up and you wish you had a sock filled with quarters in your hand.
COOL THING TWO:FOES, MINI-BOSSES AND A BIG BOSS
Basically, the Greek dudes are fighting these Persian dudes, but the director, who must have a dick made of three machine guns, does it all like a video game. The Greeks fight every death metal video from the last ten years. There’s wave after wave of giants, freaks, ninjas, mutants, wizards, and a hunchback who looks like he’s got Rosie O’Donnell on his back.
Would I have been happy if Dom DeLuise from HISTORY OF THE WORLD, PART I had shown up? Maybe, but this movie more than makes up for that glaring oversight.
NOT SO GOOD THING:DUDE NUDITY (“DUDE-ITY”)
These are Greek times, when there were a lot of naked women around. And there are some naked women in this film, but almost every naked woman scene has a muscular dude giving the screen an ass picnic. Dude-ity is something directors put in their movies so people will think they’re serious, I guess, and not just throwing in naked hotties.
Any directors reading this – IT’S OKAY TO JUST THROW IN NAKED HOTTIES. Can’t someone make a movie about naked Amazons and call it PAUSE BUTTON?My final analysis is 300 the most ass-ruling movie I’ve seen this year, and will probably be the King of 2007 unless someone makes a movie where a pair of sentient boobs fights a werewolf.
"...but the ice is frozen whiskey." That is just gold.
I was probably going to see this anyway, but now, I have to.
posted by John S. at 8:48 AM
4 Comments:
'300' puts up a good fight
CHRISTY LEMIRE | THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The ultraviolent action extravaganza "300" is based on Frank Miller's graphic novel, but did it have to be so cartoonish?
Director/co-writer Zack Snyder (the "Dawn of the Dead" remake) painstakingly re-created the comic-book panels by placing actors in front of virtual backgrounds, similar to the technique used in "Sin City." Clearly, he's not aiming to reflect reality on any level. But Snyder's depiction of the ancient Battle of Thermopylae, in which 300 Spartans fought off a much larger Persian army, is so over-the-top, it's laughable - so self-serious, it's hard to take seriously.
The effects are extremely cool at first; Snyder has very much created a unique world - dark, dramatic and visually gripping, with increasingly imaginative foes along the way. (A giant rhinoceros, an armada of elephants - sure, why not? Bring 'em all on.) But the gimmick wears off quickly and ultimately becomes overbearing; Tyler Bates' pounding score and the profuse use of voiceover don't help.
Gerard Butler, who's buffed up significantly since starring in the corny film version of "The Phantom of the Opera," comes off as a poor-man's Mel Gibson in "Braveheart." As King Leonidas, he leads his meager but muscular troops into battle with repeated roars of "This is where we fight! This is where we die!" and such, ad nauseam.
Leonidas has trained his entire life for this fight, as we see in the film's beginning, where he's taken from his family as a boy and taught to survive in the wild in a pure, driven, almost animalistic manner. By the time we reach 480 B.C., he rules Sparta alongside the beautiful Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey in a series of plunging ensembles that manage to stay on her body although the film takes place centuries prior to the invention of double-stick tape).
Once the Persian army threatens to overtake Sparta, led by the megalomaniacal Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro in eye liner, gold chains and piercings), Leonidas must assemble his men into action (but first, a goodbye romp with the wife that's straight out of late-night
Skinemax).
The violence is inventive, almost balletic in the way it's dragged out and sped up to emphasize its rhythms. After a while, though, you can only see so many slo-mo beheadings.
Leonidas also faces an enemy from within: a deformed Spartan named Ephialtes (Andrew Tiernan) who begs to join the fight but is turned away and reacts vengefully by giving away secrets to Xerxes. Think of him as the creepily fascinating Gollum figure in the film.
He faces another threat from a council member (a sinister Dominic West) who's trying to sabotage him publicly and privately, even as the queen lobbies the council to send more even troops to aid in the protracted fight.
It might actually seem relevant if weren't so ridiculous.
So I posted this review to say the following, why would the AP send Christy to review this movie? I am not one who ordinarily highlights the difference between the sexes, but when a movie is made to target the male audience 10-40, does it make sense to assign the review to Christy? She clearly does not appreciate the source material and has decided that this movie should have been something it was never designed to be. I know movie reviews are useless, but I think credibility would suggest sending a reviewer that at least understood the reason the movie was made.
After a while, though, you can only see so many slo-mo beheadings.
I have not yet reached that point.
I think we should start a club wherein the qualifying attribute of membership is not having reached the point where there are too many beheadings in a movie.
I think we will call it...."men".
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