gore never looked so good

This week, on my day off, I decided to go and see the new film adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic(pun intended) novel- 300.

300 tells the tale of the battle of the legendary Spartan king Leonidas against the world-conquering Xerxes in 480 B.C.E, at the battle of Thermopylae. Leonidas, after being given the chance to submit to Xerxes, goes off with 300 of his best men to hold off an entire army, something that they manage to do, despite being killed in the end(save one last man)

End of history lesson. Those who have seen the earlier Frank Miller work, 'Sin City' in its motion picture rendition, will certainly enjoy this veritable blood-spattered-bone-crushing-spleen-puncturing-kill em' all let-god-sort-em-out movie. Of course, there is an unrealistic amount of sytlised violence, but, it looks SO awesome, you cannot help but smile at every bloody thrust of sword or spear, regard in awe every decapitation, and laugh with joy as another one of Xerxes's minions get disemboweled. And that is just about all there is to it, save for the de-facto sex scene and the rudiments of the story that try to hold the movie together. If violence was fashionable, this would be the haute-couture version.

Critically, the movie lends itself to overtly stylised depictions of history, to an extent that it could be deemed un-authentic. To a politically correct person, the movie is subtly racist, as the predominantly black and Asian looking Persian army is drubbed by an all-white group of 300 men. Xerxes himself is depicted as a dark, tall, bald, bling-loaded black man, which Xerxes was certainly not. The armies of Xerxes are also outfitted with distinctly Arab-influenced costumes, and their behaviour is also modeled on popular perceptions of Arabs in America. To a gay man, the interaction between the 300 spartans would seem very 'Gay'. A militarized 'Brokeback Mountain' , if you will. (in fact, homosexuality was an accepted choice in ancient Greece)

cinematically, the movie is in the same league as the eye-candy directed by Zhang Yimou, 'Hero', being a special-effects loaded, visually stunning masterpiece. the only difference is, that 'Hero' had a storyline, even if it was a somewhat cue-and-rewind storyline. The novel itself is purely narrative, with no side dish stories going along with the basic plot. The movie somehow, managed to add in the story of the Spartan Queen's tribulations, as well as the now-compulsory sex scene. Why?

nonetheless, a good way to spend the afternoon.

Go see it!